The Arsenal Ladies Update and Preview of their FA Cup Match on Sunday

by Andrew Crawshaw

The Arsenal Ladies start their competitive season this coming Sunday with an FA Cup Fifth round match against Spurs.  The match is at Borehamwood and kicks off at 14:00.  The full draw is :-

• Manchester City v Reading
• Notts County v Yeovil Town
• Liverpool v Everton
• Arsenal v Spurs
• Sunderland v Aston Villa
• Birmingham City v WBA
• Bristol v Millwall
• Chelsea v Doncaster Rovers

For those of you not followers of the Ladies teams their positions relative to each other doesn’t necessarily reflect the order in the Men’s game.

The top flight of Ladies Football is the WSL 1st Division and comprises 10 teams from the following Clubs.  (I have listed them in the order we play them in the League)

Notts County, Sunderland, Liverpool, Yeovil Town, Chelsea, Birmingham, Manchester City, Reading, Bristol and Arsenal

Of these Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal are probably the strongest based on last year’s performances.

The next division is the WSL 2nd Division which consists of the following 10 clubs

Aston Villa, Brighton, Doncaster Rovers, Durham, Everton, London Bees, Millwall, Oxford, Sheffield and Watford.

Arsenal are the current FA Cup holders, beating Chelsea at Wembley last year by a single goal to nil – but it was a convincing one-nil not a nail biter!  Spurs have done really well to reach this stage as they play two divisions below Arsenal.

The winners advance to the Quarter Final to be played the following weekend, The Semi-Final is currently listed for Monday 17 April and the Final on Saturday 13 May.

The league proper is reverting to winter fixtures this year but a Spring Series has been arranged  to provide clubs and players with some match time.  Each team in the WSL1 will play the others once only.  Arsenal have 4 home games and 5 away, some other clubs will have 5 home games (luck of the draw I suppose).  The Arsenal Games are:-

Date	Home	Away	Venue and time
Sun 23 Apr	Arsenal	Notts County	Meadow Park Borehamwood 14:00
Sun 30 Apr	Sunderland	Arsenal	Hetton Centre 14:00
Thur 4 May	Arsenal	Liverpool	The Hive 19:30
Sun 7 May	Yeovil	Arsenal	Viridor Stadium 14:00
Wed 17 May	Chelsea	Arsenal	Staines Town FC 19:30
Sat 20 May	Arsenal	Birmingham	The Hive 13:00
Sun 28 May	Man City	Arsenal	City Academy Stadium 14:00
Wed 31 May	Arsenal	Reading	The Hive 19:30
Sat 3 Jun	Bristol	Arsenal	Stoke Gifford Stadium 14:00

Tickets for the Home games are available through Arsenal.com and a reduced price for all four home games is £20 adult or £11 concessions Spring Series passes now on sale ladies.  Ticket prices for individual games are Adults £6 and Concessions £3

This list is correct at the moment, the one on Arsenal.com isn’t so be careful.  The full listing of all fixtures of both WSL1 and WSL2 is on the official fawsl.com web site.

The current Arsenal Ladies Squad is

Squad No	Position	Player	Profile
1	GK	Sari van Veenendaal	Dutch, 03/04/1990, joined July 2015 from FC Twente
2	RB	Alex Scott MBE	English, 14/10/1984, in her third spell with the club first joined age 9
3	LB	Emma Mitchell	Scottish, 19/09/1992, joined in 2013
4	MF	Fara Williams MBE	English, 25/1/1984, joined 2016 from Liverpool
6	MF	Leah Williamson	English, 29/3/1997, been at Arsenal from age 9
7	Attack	Chloe Kelly	English, 05/01/1998, Been with Arsenal from childhood
8	MF	Jordan Nobbs	English, 08/12/1992, joined 2010 from Sunderland
9	Attack	Danielle Carter	English, 18/5/1993, joined in 2009 from Leyton Orient
10	MF	Kim Little	Scottish, 29/6/1990, Rejoined Oct 2016
11	MF	Carla Humphrey	English, 15/12/1996, been with Arsenal from childhood
12	CB	Vyan Sampson	English, 02/07/1996, joined in 2011 from Charlton
14	Attack	Jodie Taylor	English, 17/5/1986, joined in March 2016 from Portland Thorns in the USA
15	Attack	Katie McCabe	Irish, 01/09/1995, joined in Dec 2015 from Irish side Shelbourne Ladies
17	MF	Heather O’Reilly	American, 02/01/1985, joined 2017 from USA team FC Kansas City
19	CB	Jemma Rose	English, 19/1/1992, Joined Dec 2014 from Bristol
20	MF	Dominique Janssen	Dutch, 17/01/1995, joined July 2015 from SSG Essen
21	MF	Danielle Van de Donk	Dutch, 05/08/1991, joined Nov 2015 from Swedish side Kopparbergs
23	Forward	Beth Mead	English, 9/5/1995, joined 2017 from Sunderland
27	GK	Sian Rogers	Member of Arsenal’s Development Squad joined from Birmingham in 2015
28	MF	Charlie Devlin	Member of Arsenal’s Development Squad, been with Arsenal from age 14
	GK	Anna Moorhouse	English, 30/3/1995, Joined Feb 2017 from Doncaster
	CB	Lotte Wubben-Moy	English, Development team player

Possible Arsenal Team

Sari Van Veenendaal (GK)

Alex Scott, Vyan Simpson, Jemma Rose, Emma Mitchell

Heather O’Reilly, Fara Williams, Jordan Nobbs

Beth Mead, Jodie Taylor, Danielle Carter

Beach

Anna Moorhouse or Sian Rogers (GK), Lotte Wubben-Moy (if recovered from injury), Dominique Janssen, Danielle Van de Donk, Kim Little, Katie McCabe

COYLG

The latest from the Arsenal History Society

We are currently 90% of the way through the most detailed review of Arsenal in the 1930s (the era that made Arsenal into one of the greatest teams) ever written.   The latest articles are

Arsenal in January 1939: some signs of recovery.

December 1938: the manager makes changes and a new hero is found

Joseph Szabo, his visit to Arsenal, and the way it changed SC Braga’s history.

George Hunt: the first ever player to move from Tottenham Hotspur to Arsenal

The Arsenal History Society publishes numerous series of articles exploring different aspects of Arsenal’s history.   You can find an index to all the series to date on the Society’s web site