by Andrew Crawshaw
Arsenal started with all of our fit senior outfield players
Sari van Veenendaal
Lisa Evans, Leah Williamson, Louise Quinn, Emma Mitchell c
Leah Walti
Dominique Bloodworth, Danielle van de Donk
Katie McCabe, Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead
Subs – Pauline Peyraud-Magnin, and three U18s – Ava Kuyken, Ruby Grant and Paige Bailey-Gayle
Brighton
Hourihan gk, Barton, Rafferty, Williams, Perry, Peplow, Legg, Green, Natkiel, Umotong, Whelan
Subs – Gillet, Gibbons, Brazil, Brett, Harris, Simpkins and Le Tissier
Clearly none of our four long term injured players were going to be available
- Viktoria Schnaderback – Knee injured in pre season no date yet for her return
- Danielle Carter – Cruciate knee ligaments – now in the gym but unlikely to play again this season
- Kim Little – Broken tibia in the Chelsea match – out till late January
- Jordan Nobbs – Anterior Cruciate Ligament damage so that puts paid to her season.
Jessica Samuelsson and Tabea Kemme were also unavailable failing to recover from their injuries but there was some good news with both Lisa Evans and Emma Mitchell being able to return to the starting line up and Pauline Peyraud-Magnin at least fit enough to be on the bench.
We started very quickly and were nearly ahead in the first minute with Vivianne Miedema pouncing on a poor back pass but Hourihan made an excellent stop in the Brighton goal. We continued pressing for an early goal; Lia Walti had a shot which was wide right and Miedema had a shot blocked then another one saved and Danielle van de Donk hit the bar all in the first 5 minutes!
Then completely against the run of play Umotong for Brighton was found with a long ball and out muscled two defenders and scored a well taken goal. For a few minutes Brighton were in the ascendancy as we regrouped.
In Min 16 Katie McCabe had a shot blocked, then Miedema and McCabe in the 18th minute. A minute later Miedema headed wide from a Mead corner as Arsenal pressure began to tell. It wasn’t entirely one way traffic though as van Veenendaal made a brilliant finger tip save to push a long range shot from Kayleigh Green on to the crossbar.
Then in the 24th minute our pressure finally told on Brighton as Vivianne Miedema pounced on another poor Brighton backpass, rounded the keeper and scored from the right hand side of the box. The second 15 minute period ended with another couple of Arsenal efforts being saved by Hourihan who was having a good game.
The next 15 minute spell up to half time was where we won the game. In the 33rd minute Miedema spun away from two markers as a throw in came to her from near the left hand goal line, she laid the ball back for Dominique Bloodworth who struck it sweetly on the volley and we were ahead. Mead had a shot saved in the 38th minute but then provided a perfect corner for Danielle van de Donk to head home our third. Hourihan saved another Miedema shot as the half came to a close with Arsenal 3 – 1 ahead.
Brighton made a half time substitution with Ellie Brazil replacing Jenna Legg. In truth the second half was more relaxed, Arsenal knew they had done enough to win the match and made a professional job of controlling the game keeping possession and always looking as though they could score more goals should it really become necessary.
Our efforts weren’t quite on target or were within reach of Hourihan. That changed in the 80th minute when Beth Mead scored the pick of our goals. She collected the ball on the left hand side of the 18 yard box, from a wonderful ball by van de Donk, took a touch moving the ball to her right foot and struck the sweetest of curlers over Hourihan into the top right hand corner of the net. Quite Exquisite.
We then gave all three of our youngsters some more game time, Paige Bailey-Gayle coming on for Emma Mitchell, Ava Kuyken for Danielle van de Donk and with only a couple of minutes to go Ruby Grant came on for Vivianne Miedema.
Our attendance was 1,237
Nine league games played and nine wins – our 100% start continues.
Here is a link to the goals etc from Arsenal.com – you will probably need to have an arsenal video login to access it, if you haven’t got one you should, its free and gives you access to all of the mens games in full and highlights of the Women, the U18 and U23 matches as well.
Login or register to play video
What happened in the other WSL matches?
Liverpool 0 Birmingham 2 – Birmingham got off to a dream start at Liverpool as Emma Follis scored in the third minute with a good half-volley following a cross by Sargeant. Schofield scored the second in the 40th minute when through one on one following an assist from Harriet Scott. Birmingham keeping up pressure for second place whilst it is now four defeats in a row for Liverpool. Attendance was 336
Reading 2 – Everton 1 – Bottom of the table Everton took the lead when Hannah Cain swept home Anessa Kaagman’s cross. Unfortunately that was as good as it got for them. Within seven minutes Brooke Chaplen equalised from a Remi Allen cross. She then won the match in the closing stages to move them above Chelsea to fourth. Attendance was 285
West Ham 2 – Bristol 0 – A good win for West Ham moving them away from the scrap to avoid relegation. Alisha Lehmann nearly got a goal for West ham in the opening minutes but her shot was cleared off the line. She wasn’t to be denied again though as she made a solo run and her shot from the edge of the area took a deflection and beat Baggaley in the Bristol Goal. West Ham secured the points late on as Jane Ross pounced on a poor back pass and tucked the ball home. Attendance was 562
Yeovil 0 v Man City 4 – You could have put your shirt on the outcome of this match. Second place Man City are, like us, unbeaten but had won 5 and drawn 3 at kickoff. Yeovil have at last won a WSL game but have the worst defensive record in the league. Under the circumstances they will probably regard the final score as acceptable. City were two up at half time through Nikita Parris and Carolone Weir. Yeovil started the second half better with Ann-Marie Heatherson heading against the bar and Olivia Fergusson went close but late goals from Steph Houghton and Claire Emslie added gloss to the scoreline. Attendance was 1,153
It was Chelsea’s turn to sit out as the 11th club.
Here is the current table
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
| 1 | Arsenal | 9 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 5 | 37 | 27 |
| 2 | Man City | 9 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 30 | 6 | 24 | 21 |
| 3 | Birmingham | 9 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 12 | 6 | 6 | 19 |
| 4 | Reading | 9 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 15 | 10 | 5 | 17 |
| 5 | Chelsea | 9 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 16 |
| 6 | Bristol | 9 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 14 | -7 | 11 |
| 7 | West Ham | 9 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 10 | 19 | -9 | 10 |
| 8 | Liverpool | 9 | 3 | 0 | 6 | 5 | 15 | -10 | 9 |
| 9 | Brighton | 9 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 7 | 23 | -16 | 4 |
| 10 | Yeovil | 9 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 5 | 28 | -23 | 3 |
| 11 | Everton | 8 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 17 | -12 | 2 |
Next up is the eagerly awaited top of the table clash between Man City and Arsenal next Sunday at 12:30 again being shown by BBC on line and on the Red Button. We are guaranteed to be top of the table whatever the result but I’m sure we would all like to beat City and end the first half of the league season with our 100% record intact.
COYWG
Thanks for the writeup Andrew.
Stats from the game. Arsenal led possession with 65%, led on shots (24 to 4), led on shots on target (10 to 1), led on corners (11 to 1). Brighton led on fouls (12 to 7). Some medja places (and I) noticed that Brighton had a Le Tissier playing, but she is apparently not related to the former Southampton player.
One of the reports I read, was from the Guardian. Their report was disappointing in a number of regards. They made quite a big deal out of explaining just how poor Williamson and Quinn were for Brighton to open the scoring. For some reason, they felt it necessary to mention that Phil Neville left the game at 53 minutes. Who cares about when Phil Neville arrives or leaves? (Yes, I know he is temporarily the England manager.) Finally, at 67 minutes the Guardian starts complaining about the fact some Arsenal supporters (most? all?) started singing Christmas songs. Apparently the Guardian staff hate Christmas, and this really bothered them.
@Gord, I was surprised at how easily our two defenders were brushed aside for the Brighton goal and I’m sure it’s something that Joe Montemurro will be working on in training this week. Umotong is a very powerful player and if given better service by her teammates will score many more goals. For the most part we were able to keep her quiet by stopping the ball getting to her. We were in complete control of the game for all but 10 minutes or so
The big test comes next Sunday away at City when we will see how our depleted squad copes in a far more hostile environment..
It would be nice if the Emirates screens were showing the match pre Sours but I doubt that will be the case.
OT: GameDay13 stats – Caution League
Liverpool! is still leading the caution league at only 398 man-minutes of caution. Arsenal and Cardiff are the two middlemost teams putting the median amount of caution at 778 man-minutes, with a MAD of 91.
The gap between Liverpool! and Wolves is 77 man-minutes. The gap between the spuds (516) and Bournemouth is 164 man-minutes. There are gaps of 53 and 75 on the high end (Brighton leading with 1057 man-minutes). That 164 man-minute gap between the spuds and Bournemouth is suspicious. Liverpool, Wolves, Newcastle and the spuds seem to be getting less caution than they should.
The median of this low group is between Wolves and Newcastle, who are only separated by a single man-minute of caution, so I can’t get a useful measure of dispersion from the median analysis. The standard deviation is just under 50. The standard deviation of the other 16 teams is just under 125. If I arbitrarily throw out Newcastle, the MAD of this low group ends up being 41, which is close to the 50 for a standard deviation.
For people who want to play around with numbers, I did something a little different. Instead of making a histogram, I added together 4 Gaussians all with a characteristic width of 50 and means of 398, 475, 476 and 516 and plotted that sum on the range of 0 to 1500 using Gnuplot. I added to this another sum of Gaussians from the other 16 teams having a characteristic width of 125. The height of the low peak is 0.025 and that of the high peak is 0.036. These 2 peaks cross at (554,0.0096). So there is significant overlap in these two distributions. Probably enough that you could be very certain that they are actually different populations.
OT: GameDay13 stats – Caution League
The Top-6 are:
Liverpool! 398
spuds 516
Chel$ea 697
Man$ity 737
Arsenal 757
ManU 915
OT: GameDay13 stats – Treatment League
The team that has required the least treatment is Watford (4), followed by CPalace (6). The most treatments are for Everton (19), Southampton (19) and Cardiff (20).
The Top-6 are:
ManU 7
Chel$ea 8
Man$ity 8
Liverpool 11
Arsenal 12
spuds 13
OT: GameDay13 stats – Inverse Treatment League
The team that has inflicted the fewest needs for treatments is Wolves at 6 followed by Leicester at 7. The teams that have inflicted the most need for treatment on their opposition are: CPalace (17), spuds (18) and Everton (18).
The Top-6 are:
Chel$ea 12
Man$ity 12
Liverpool! 12
Arsenal 14
ManU 15
spuds 18
This inverse treatment league should have data similar to the caution league. The caution league for the most part relies on the issuing of fouls, cards and penalties to create its measure. Which are all elements under the control of 😈 Mike Riley and the PGMO. The inverse treatment league is independent of this group of unqualified bozos.
Chel$ea 1 3
Man$ity 2 4
Liverpool! 3 1
Arsenal 4 5
ManU 5 6
spuds 6 2
The spuds are the dirtiest team of the Top-6, and yet they suffer little caution. I would guess that most teams recognize that the referees will _NOT_ protect them when they play the spuds, and consequently the spuds have needed the highest number of substitutions as a result of having a player needing treatment at 8.
Newcastle was another team with an anomalously low amount of caution applied to it, and they are right next to the spuds in the inverse treatment league.
OT: GameDay13 stats – Referee League
The referee is charged with making sure the game is safe for the players. The only independent measure I have of this, is how many treatments they oversee.
Martin Atkinson is the worst referee in the EPL, having overseen the need for 26 treatments (13 each to home and away). The time teams had to play short handed was also about even at 31:26, as was the number of substitutions needed (4 and 4).
Anthony Taylor is second worst at 23 treatments (with an approximately even split home and away). Mike Dean tied in 9th place.
Mike Dean causes treatments to home about twice as often to away. Jonathon Moss is the opposite. Attwell is also relatively harder on away teams.
Atkinson has caused the most substitutions at 8 (split evenly). Moss, Probert and Oliver cause substitutions for away teams, Kavanagh tends to be bad for home teams.
OT: GameDay13 Stats
I would say that in terms of the caution league (and things like fouls and cards), that Liverpool!, Chel$ea and Man$ity should all be about the same. In other words, Liverpool! is getting about half the number of cards that it should be, something like what is happening with the spuds.
A team we recently played had been whinging in the medja about their striker getting kicked too much. CPalace is essentially as dirty as the spuds, so why should their striker not get kicked?
The team that benefited from the most time where the opposition was short handed (getting treatment)? Why StateAid (45)! CPalace close at 40 minutes.
OT: can Pain In The Arsenal not attack Arsenal players?
No.
Well done , the lassies . Great showing.
Late update on Jessica Samuelsson. It is now confirmed that she suffered a fractured bone in her foot playing for Sweden in an International friendly against England in November. Not related to her earlier injury. Just the latest example of the ‘car thieves’ breaking another player as soon as we fixed the previous problem.