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# Arsenal Women v Paris FC Match Preview
- URL: https://www.arsenalwomentrailblazers.com/arsenal-women-v-paris-fc-match-preview/
- Published: 2026-08-22T09:18:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-22T09:18:00.000Z
- Description: Arsenal Women finally return to our screens against Paris FC, so who could Renée Slegers start and what should we actually be watching for?
- Author: Roberto Revilla
- Tags: Arsenal Women News

The first thing worth saying about Paris FC is that if you’ve seen the name on Arsenal’s pre-season schedule and assumed this is going to be one of those friendlies where Arsenal will be giving the opposition a good hiding, I’d probably adjust that expectation slightly, because Paris FC are a very serious football team and, when I started looking into them properly, I thought this was quite a clever choice of opponent for Arsenal at this particular stage of pre-season.

Paris FC finished second in France last season, ahead of Paris Saint-Germain, and if you’re relatively new to the French game and the names are already becoming confusing, yes, Paris FC and Paris Saint-Germain are entirely different football clubs despite both being in Paris and apparently deciding that helping the rest of us distinguish between them was somebody else’s problem. Paris FC won fifteen of their twenty-two league matches, lost only four, scored forty-six goals and conceded sixteen, then beat PSG in the end-of-season play-offs before eventually losing the final to Lyon, so we’re talking about a team that spent last season competing right at the top end of French football rather than somebody Arsenal should expect to move around comfortably for ninety minutes. 

They’ve also already had a fairly substantial pre-season test because they went to Germany earlier this month and played Bayern Munich, losing 2-0, and I wouldn’t read too much into the defeat itself because Bayern were considerably further through their preparation and were using that game as their final rehearsal before competitive football began, but I do think it tells us something about the sort of programme Paris FC have chosen for themselves. Bayern and Arsenal within a couple of weeks of each other is not exactly easing yourself gently back into work after the summer holidays.

I haven't been able to find a complete, reliable public record of every Paris FC friendly this summer, so I’m not going to manufacture a lovely sequence of results simply because it would make this preview look more complete, but the Bayern match is useful because Bayern won with two first-half goals and Paris were able to keep the second half scoreless, albeit in fairly punishing heat, and what interests me more than that result is the team Arsenal are actually going to have in front of them on Sunday, because there are some players here we should know about before the game starts.

Clara Matéo is probably the obvious one, particularly if you watched France around Euro 2025, because she’s developed from somebody who was primarily seen as a wide player into a forward who can play through the middle and drop away from the traditional centre-forward position, and she had a superb 2024/25 season when she scored eighteen league goals and added seven assists. So if Matéo is involved on Sunday, I’d pay attention to where she actually goes rather than assuming Arsenal’s centre-backs will have somebody politely standing between them waiting for the ball, because part of what makes her difficult is that she can leave that space and become involved elsewhere, which then presents defenders with that annoying little decision of whether to follow her and leave somewhere else exposed or let her go and hope somebody in midfield deals with it.

And Paris have changed a little as well, so this isn't simply last season's team arriving in Borehamwood unchanged. There are players leaving and arriving, and their own combinations will still be developing, which is partly why I think Sunday could become quite an interesting comparison between two sides trying to reach roughly the same destination through pre-season but doing so with different levels of change around them.

For Arsenal, though, I think the timing of this match is almost perfect because if you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago what I wanted to see from it, I'd probably have given you the fairly standard pre-season answer about fitness, minutes in legs and getting the new players integrated, whereas after listening to Renée yesterday I think we can be much more specific than that. She told us the first part of pre-season was about understanding Arsenal, understanding the game model and bringing everybody into the group, whereas they're now reaching the stage where the detail matters more, where players are finding what she called the “real connections” on the pitch and beginning to recognise each other's “super strengths”, and I love that phrase because it gives us something to watch rather than something vague to hope is happening somewhere behind the scenes.

We've already had little glimpses of it even though, rather inconveniently, we haven't been allowed to see most of them ourselves. Chloe Kelly puts a corner onto Selina Cerci's head [against AC Milan](https://www.arsenalwomentrailblazers.com/arsenal-women-2-3-ac-milan-what-we-learned-from-the-la-manga-friendly/) and Selina nearly scores, then Chloe delivers another corner [against Manchester City](https://www.arsenalwomentrailblazers.com/arsenal-women-beat-manchester-city-2-1-but-what-are-we-starting-to-learn/) and Stina Blackstenius does score. Selina then creates the winner for Lisa Baum against City, Olivia Smith has been moving inside from the left and creating opportunities, Georgia Stanway keeps appearing around the edge of the penalty area, and none of those things individually tells us very much because we're still talking about tiny samples of pre-season football, but once the same types of connections start appearing more than once, I think we're allowed to become curious.

Sunday is the first time we can actually look for them ourselves.

And that makes trying to predict the starting eleven rather fun, because I genuinely don't know whether Renée will use Paris FC to move closer towards the side she expects to start at Brighton or whether she still thinks there are combinations she needs to test before she gets there. My suspicion is we'll see a bit of both, because there's still Charlton on Wednesday and therefore another opportunity to spread minutes around, but we're now close enough to the WSL season that I'd expect some players to start spending longer together.

Anneke Borbe would be my choice in goal after what sounded like a really impressive performance against Manchester City, where she made several important saves and was apparently very quick off her line as well, and I think there's something useful about allowing her to build on that rather than immediately changing everything again, although obviously we don't know how Renée intends to distribute goalkeeper minutes through these last two friendlies.

At the back, [I want to see Ona Batlle](https://www.arsenalwomentrailblazers.com/ona-batlle-arsenal-women-signing-analysis/), and I realise I've said that approximately fourteen times since Arsenal signed her, but Sunday's different because now we can actually watch where she goes. I'm much less interested in whether the team graphic puts Ona at right-back than I am in where she is when Arsenal have the ball, because if she starts moving inside, I want to see who reacts to that, whether the winger stays wider, whether Georgia moves somewhere different, whether Arsenal suddenly have an extra player in midfield and, perhaps most importantly, whether those movements look deliberate and understood by the people around her rather than everybody discovering them at the same time.

I'd expect Leah Williamson to be involved, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Lotte Wubben-Moy either, although Steph Catley and Emily Fox obviously give Renée other possibilities, and this is where predicting an exact back four starts to feel like I'm pretending to know what happened in training this morning, which I don't. If I were picking the team myself, I'd probably want Leah and Steph together for a meaningful period now because we're close enough to Brighton that the central defensive relationship matters, but I can equally understand Renée wanting to look at different combinations around Ona and Emily before deciding anything.

Midfield is where I become considerably less certain, because [Georgia Stanway](https://www.arsenalwomentrailblazers.com/georgia-stanway-everything-you-need-to-know-about-arsenals-new-midfield-engine/) has looked very involved from everything we've heard so far and I would absolutely start her, but Kyra Cooney-Cross returning against Manchester City changes the options again. I don't think Kyra necessarily needs to start on Sunday after only just coming back, and I'd rather see her minutes built sensibly than get carried away because we're pleased to have her back, but her presence gives Renée another type of midfielder entirely, and when you add Mariona Caldentey, Frida Maanum and Géraldine Reuteler to the conversation, you start to see why trying to decide Arsenal's definitive midfield in August is a fairly effective way of giving yourself a headache.

[Géraldine Reuteler](https://www.arsenalwomentrailblazers.com/geraldine-reuteler-why-arsenal-women-have-signed-a-bundesliga-diamond/) is probably the player I'm most curious about in that group because I'm increasingly convinced we'll understand her Arsenal role by watching the people around her rather than simply following what she does herself. She can occupy different midfield and attacking spaces; she can move between them, and if she leaves one area and somebody else suddenly has room to arrive there, that might be every bit as important as whether Géraldine herself gets the final pass. That's one of the things Renée's interview changed for me, actually, because when she talks about players recognising each other's strengths, you start thinking less about where somebody is supposed to stand and more about what their movement allows somebody else to do.

Then we reach the front line, where Renée has the sort of problem most managers would quite happily create an additional problem in their lives to acquire, because Alessia Russo, Stina Blackstenius, Selina Cerci, Chloe Kelly, Olivia Smith and Caitlin Foord are all sitting there waiting to be arranged somehow, and that's before we start moving midfielders into attacking areas as well.

If you're forcing me to predict it, I'd start Chloe on the right because I want to keep developing whatever is happening with those deliveries into the box, Alessia through the middle because we're getting close enough to Brighton that I want her building connections with the likely first-choice attacking group, and Olivia on the left because I'm fascinated by what we've heard about her drifting inside and I want to see what that looks like when Ona or another full-back is moving around her.

So if I'm putting my imaginary team sheet together now, I'm leaning towards Borbe in goal, Ona, Leah and Lotte somewhere in the back four with the other position depending on how Renée wants to manage Emily and Steph, Georgia in midfield with Géraldine involved, and Chloe, Alessia and Olivia ahead of them. I'm deliberately leaving myself one midfield place and one defensive place rather than inventing certainty I don't have, and Renée will probably reward all this careful qualification by naming a team I haven't remotely considered anyway.

The substitutions might actually tell us more.

If Alessia starts and Selina replaces her, I don't simply want to compare the two performances and decide who “won”, because that's a fairly uninteresting way of looking at a squad this deep. I want to see whether Arsenal themselves change, whether Selina attacks the space differently, whether Chloe starts looking for her in the air more often, whether somebody gets closer to her, and then if Stina appears as well, whether Renée is willing to put two forwards together and ask Paris FC a completely different question from the one they've spent the previous hour answering.

The same applies in midfield. If Kyra comes on, does Georgia suddenly have more freedom to go forward? If Géraldine changes position, who moves with her? If Ona starts outside and later appears inside, does that change the player ahead of her? Those are the little things I'll be watching because I think Sunday is late enough in pre-season that the football should start looking intentional, even when the personnel changes.

And Paris FC should make Arsenal work for those answers. This is a side that conceded only sixteen times across twenty-two league games last season, so if Arsenal find themselves facing an organised defence and having lots of the ball without immediately finding a way through, that's probably quite useful preparation for what we're going to see repeatedly in the WSL. 

I'm interested in what happens when the first route doesn't work, because there were moments last season when Arsenal could become a little too patient, then patient again, and then so patient that the opposition had enough time to organise themselves, check everybody was in the right place and perhaps make a cup of tea before we tried to attack them again. This squad feels like it should have more ways to change that now. Chloe can deliver from wide areas, Cerci and Stina give you physical and aerial threats, Olivia can carry the ball directly towards defenders, Georgia can threaten from distance, Ona can alter the numbers in midfield, and Géraldine can move between spaces, so if Paris FC close one door on Sunday, I'm interested in whether Arsenal now find another one more quickly.

And because we're finally watching this one together rather than me reporting back from a match none of us was allowed into, I want you involved before kick-off as well. Send me your starting eleven and your score prediction, either through Instagram at Arsenal Women Trailblazers or in response to the posts for this episode, and I'll share some of them before the match, and we can see afterwards whether any of us understood what Renée was thinking.

I'm going **Arsenal 4, Paris FC 1**, mainly because Paris FC are good enough that I don't expect this to be comfortable, but Arsenal have enough quality attacking options now that I'm finding it quite difficult to imagine them going through ninety minutes without creating an absolute stack of chances.