Chelsea Women v Arsenal – Sunday 14 October 14:00 Preview

Chelsea Women v Arsenal – Sunday 14 October 14:00 Preview

By Andrew Crawshaw

This a match that will really be a test of our title credentials. So far we have comfortably won all three of our league matches, albeit they have been against teams we should expect to beat. Chelsea on the other hand have won only one of their games and have been held to goalless draws in the other three. The draw against Man City is understandable but they must consider the other two as four points dropped, which in a season of only 20 games can be difficult to make up.

Our International contingent have returned from their efforts.

Sari Van Veenendaal was with the Netherlands squad for their World Cup qualifier against Denmark but wasn’t used due to lack of match fitness following a pre-season knock, Dominique Bloodworth and Danielle Van de Donk played the entirety of both home and away fixtures which they won 2-0 at home and 2-1 in Denmark. Of some concern was Viviane Miedema only coming on for the last minutes of each game as she was said to have got a knock in training. I hope it isn’t anything too serious.

Lia Walti guided Switzerland to a 1-1 draw with Belgium in Switzerland ensuring that they go to the playoff final against Netherlands to be played next month

Jordan Nobbs played both of England’s two friendlies, the 1-0 win over Brazil and the 1-1 draw against Australia. Beth Mead started in the Australia game and was a real handful for the 70 minutes she was on the pitch and certainly ought to have earned a penalty when bundled over in the penalty area late in the first half. She also provided the assist for the England goal. Leah Williamson was an unneeded substitute.

Pauline Peyraud-Magnin was an unused substitute for the France v Australia friendly last Friday and the France v Cameroon match on Tuesday.

Katie McCabe and Louise Quinn played in the 4 – 0 loss the Republic of Ireland suffered at the hands of Poland, all of the goals coming in the second half.

With the exception of the extent of the injury to Viviane Miedema everyone else seems to be OK so it would appear that Joe Montemurro is likely to have a full squad available for Sunday.

Chelsea were last season’s Champions as well as comprehensively beating us in the FA Cup Final and are the one team I rated better than us at the start of the season. Based on our performances in the second half of last season where we made up 7 of the 8 point gap to Manchester City I thought we were at least at their level. So far this season, results would indicate that we are stronger than last year, both in defence and attack.

Here is the current League table – please note that with 11 teams in the league, everyone sits out one Matchweek in each half of the season, in addition the match between Bristol and Everton scheduled for 30 September was postponed hence six teams on 3 matches instead of the expected four.

	Team	P	W	D	L	+/-	Pts
1	Arsenal	3	3	0	0	13	9
2	Birmingham	4	3	0	1	2	9
3	Man. City	4	2	2	0	5	8
4	Reading	4	2	1	1	4	7
5	Chelsea	4	1	3	0	2	6
6	Bristol	3	1	2	0	1	5
7	West Ham	3	1	1	1	0	4
8	Liverpool	3	1	0	2	-5	3
9	Everton	3	0	1	2	-5	1
10	Brighton	4	0	0	4	-5	0
11	Yeovil	3	0	0	3	-12	0

Our three games have been against teams in the bottom five, we have beaten Liverpool 5-1, Yeovil 7-0 and West Ham 4-3.

Chelsea started with goalless draws against Man City, Bristol and Everton before scoring their first league goals against Brighton, who they beat 2-0. They did beat Montpellier by an aggregate 13-0 in the Women’s Champions League and have comfortably won all of their Continental Cup group matches so we should assume that their strikers will be in form on Sunday.

The match is at Wimbledon AFC Ground, Kingsmeadow in Kingston upon Thames. The ground has a capacity of 4,850 with 2,265 seats. The address is Jack Goodchild Way, Kingston upon Thames and the nearest station is Norbiton about a 15 minute walk from the ground. Tickets are £6 for adults and half that for concessions and juniors. I’m sure you can get them on the gate or you can go through the main Chelsea website, selecting Women in the team drop down.

It should be a cracking game between two of the top three Women’s teams in the country. With the men being on a Nationalism break there is a absolutely no excuse not to go to watch the Women instead.

If you really can’t get to the ground the match is also on BT Sport from 13:45

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