Arsenal Women have submitted their squad for next week’s UWCL qualifiers in Sweden, where they take on Linkoping on Wednesday at 4pm UK time. If they win, they play the winners of Paris FC v Kryvbas (who are from Ukraine) on Saturday afternoon in Sweden. If they lose, they will play the losers of Paris FC v Kryvbas on Saturday.
Should Arsenal win both games and make it through to the playoff round in October, they will be able to alter their squad ahead of those matches. The WSL transfer deadline is on Thursday 14 September so anybody Arsenal add ahead of that date could be added to the squad. Similarly, players can be removed.
The headline news is that Beth Mead is included in the registration which means she has a realistic chance of making the matchday squad for at least one of the matches after rupturing her ACL in November. Leah Williamson, Vivianne Miedema and Laura Wienroither are earlier in their recoveries from the same injury. All four of Arsenal’s summer signings are in the squad. The squad list is as below:
Goalkeepers: 1.Zinsberger, 14.D’Angelo, 40.Williams
Defenders: 3.Wubben-Moy, 5.Beattie, 7.Catley, 16.Maritz, 27.Codina, 28.Ilestedt
Midfielders: 10.Little, 12.Maanum, 13.Walti, 22.Kuhl
Forwards: 9.Mead, 15.McCabe, 17.Hurtig, 19.Foord, 20.Gio, 21.Pelova, 23.Russo, 24.Lacasse, 25.Blackstenius
Arseblog News will be in Sweden for both games next week with all the news, previews and interviews!
Will be great to see Beth back getting some minutes and some of the other new arrivals showing their stuff.
Have to say, 6 defenders doesn’t seem a lot, even if Katie McCabe can play left back. We really do need another right back!
Yep, that is the position we are lightest for sure.
What will we do if we don’t get a right back and Maritz is unavailable? Ilestedt or Wubben-Moy or maybe use wingbacks?
Pelova was used as a right wing-back during the just-concluded World Cup, I think that the middle of the park needs a more tiki-taka CM. A good box-to-box CM/DM is what we need now to complement the squad. Any news on that Tim?
I’ve seen some tidbits in the news feeds about Ana-Maria Crnegorcevic (rw/rb, 32 years old, currently Barca player) coming to Arsenal for £120,000 transfer fee.
Nice to see Gio staying put.
She will still go, just might be after these games.
Should we be worried about those teams that we might face in this pre eliminatory round?
Yes, I think so. We won’t be match fit and many of our players won’t have recovered fully from their recent exertions – a World Cup campaign hard on the heels of very challenging season. Linköping are a good side, in the middle of their season. Okay the Damallsvenskan season had a break for the world cup but that just means they will be fresher than us. Probably have a settled side as well.
We *ought* to come through but it genuinely will be quite tough.
Why the fvckk do we have to go through this stress after finishing second in the league?
This is just one of the reasons we don’t take the women games seriously. 😏
Because we were not 2nd; Man. United were!
We finished 3rd but even if we finished 2nd we would still need to qualify for group stages. I think it’s fair to be critical of the current format when teams that are better than so many of the teams in the groups stages get eliminated before the group stages even start.
The concept of a “Champions League” is fine in principle but the problem is the format will always be designed to allow in as many teams as possible to make more money. That is all that the powers that be are interested in, never mind the welfare of the players, or the fixture congestion.
“9. Mead” is good to read