by Andrew Crawshaw
Here is my current list of our injured players
Pauline Peyraud-Magnin – Minor hand injury caused her to withdraw from the France squad during the last International break and meant that she could only be on the bench last Sunday – Likely to be on the bench again this week
Jessica Samuelsson – Game time being carefully managed following long term foot injury – may possibly be available for Sunday
Lisa Evans – minor knock on international duty not likely to be long term – may possibly be available for Sunday
Tabea Kemme – Knee Cartilage, she had a reaction from her knee following her injury time appearance against Reading now back in recovery – unlikely to be available (or risked) for Sunday
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
Emma Mitchell – withdrew from Scotland squad and was substituted in Min 70, likely to be fit for Sunday
Jordan Nobbs – knee Jordan Nobbs was the latest last week and the news was about as bad as I feared – Anterior Cruciate Ligament damage so that probably puts paid to her season.
That’s 9 out of our squad of 18 senior players carrying injuries of some kind, 5 of them long term.
Jordan is the third player since March we have lost to an ACL injury. Kim Little was the first, returning at the end of pre-season before having her fibula broken in an awful challenge by Chelsea player Drew Spence on 16 October. If we are lucky she might be back on the pitch mid to late January. We then lost Danielle Carter in the last game of last season, she is now back in the Gym and told me that she is progressing according to schedule but is unlikely to feature before the end of the season, if at all.
Who do we have who might come into the team from our junior players? This is an extremely difficult question to answer as Arsenal are very precious about them and most of the other web sites are worse than useless. I have dug around and this seems to be the current WSL Academy League Table from an FA webpage fulltime-league.thefa.com
| Team | P | W | D | L | +/- | Pts | |
| 1 | Bristol City | 9 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 15 | 17 * |
| 2 | Everton | 9 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 15 | 17 |
| 3 | Reading | 8 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 12 | 17 * |
| 8 | FA East Region | 9 | 4 | 2 | 3 | -1 | 15 * |
| 5 | Arsenal | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 23 | 13 |
| 6 | Liverpool | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 15 | 13 |
| 7 | Chelsea | 5 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 12 |
| 8 | Man City | 8 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 7 * |
| 9 | Birmingham | 8 | 2 | 0 | 6 | -24 | 6 |
| 10 | West Ham | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | -13 | 3 |
| 11 | Brighton | 6 | 0 | 2 | 4 | -14 | 3 * |
| 12 | Yeovil | 7 | 1 | 0 | 6 | -37 | 3 |
Please note that where points are marked with a * an adjustment has been made (but I don’t know what or why).
We seem to have had 4 games postponed – Home matches (which we play at the University of Hertfordshire) against Birmingham and Chelsea and away matches at Yeovil and Birmingham.
Our results :-
Reading v Arsenal 18 November 2 – 4, the FA site lists all of the Reading players but none of the Arsenal which is really helpful.
West Ham v Arsenal 31 October 0 – 4. Our team was Ana Caterina Albuquerque, Paige Bailey-Gayle, Maxine Borden, Hannah Dawbarn, Melissa Fillis Ruby Grant (hat-trick), Liby Harper, Ava Kuyken, Lachante Paul, Annie Roberts, Shauna Vassal. Subs Jennifer Echegini, Amelia Hazard (goal) and Shannon Helina
Man City v Arsenal 28 October 3 – 3. Our team was Ana Caterina Albuquerque, Paige Bailey-Gayle, Hannah Dawbarn, Jennifer Echegini, Melissa Fillis, Liby Harper, Amelia Hazard, Lachante Paul, Gracie Pearse, Annie Roberts, Shauna Vassal. The only sub listed was Maxine Borden and there is no listing of who the goalscorers were.
Arsenal v FA East Region (Ipswich) 4 – 1. Our team was Ana Caterina Albuquerque (goal), Paige Bailey-Gayle (goal), Jennifer Echegini (two goals), Melissa Fillis, Ruby Grant, Liby Harper, Amelia Hazard, Lachante Paul, Gracie Pearse, Tasmin Sibanda, Shauna Vassal. Again the only sub listed was Maxine Borden
Arsenal v Yeovil 9 Sept 15 – 1(that isn’t a typo fifteen – one). Our team was Ana Caterina, Albuquerque, Hannah Dawbarn, Jennifer Echegini (goal), Melissa Fillis, Silvana Flores (hattrick), Ruby Grant (hattrick), Libby Harper, Amelia Hazard (two goals), Lachante Paul (four goals) Abbie Roberts (captain) and Tamsyn Sibanda. The only substitute listed was Shannon Helina
The obvious player to step up is Ava Kuyken who has been part of the first team all season. She was the first substitute to come on on Sunday and is a midfielder.
The other two players to make their first team debuts last week were Paige Bailey-Gayle and Ruby Grant both members of the England U17 team. They will probably be found seats on the Bench.
One other possibility is Melissa Filis another member of England’s U17 squad, but I suspect not for the WSL fixtures just yet although she may well get a chance in the Continental Tyres Cup matches over the next few weeks.
We have signed experienced Danish International defender Janni Arnth who will join us on 01 January
Before then we have two WSL matches to play – Brighton this coming Sunday and then Manchester City away on Dec 2nd. We then have our last Continental Tyres Cup group games against Charlton on Dec 05 and Millwall on Dec 12. After that there will be a welcome break until Jan 6 when we meet West Ham in the WSL.
COYWG
Is Alex Scott still fit? Any chance on signing her temporarily?
@Gord
She wasn’t anywhere match fit at the end of last season, plus she’s far too busy now with all of her media work. I suspect we may well be looking for a midfielder in the January transfer window.
I think we will be strong enough to get a result at home to Brighton this coming Sunday, even assuming that a couple of our youngsters play. I’m not sure that we have the ability to beat City on Sunday week without at least three of the top four fit to play the full 90 minutes
Well, let’s hope for the best this weekend, including no more injuries. Hopefully we’ll get some people back off the injured list soon.
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OT: Statistics (Men’s)
I collected 23 “variables” out of the data up to the end of GameDay 12. One variable is time of possession, which is obviously strongly correlated to percent possession. I haven’t tried to find the amount of extra time in either half, so I am just assuming 90 minute games. With 23 variables, there are 506 possible relationships, except that comparing A to B is the same as comparing B to A. So the number of correlations examined is 253.
A few of the correlations are either -1 (3) or +1 (2), and they are not investigated at all. There were 8 strongish negative correlations (at or below -0.70). There were 17 strongish positive correlations (at or above +0.70). The only correlation which seems to point to something real, is that the rate at which the home team commits fouls (home fouls divided by home possession) shows a strongish correlation with the amount of away possession. The other 24 strongish correlations are like comparing two measures of the same thing. The other 223 correlations are either not strong enough or are indistinguishable from no correlation (near zero is the most common situation).
It is possible that the data constitutes multiple populations, and this would make analysis more difficult. One possible partitioning is:
1. Top6 v Top6
2. Top6 v ROTP
3. ROTP v Top6
4. ROTP v ROTP
This latter group would be the largest subset, and so I looked at just ROTP v ROTP games. While many of the strong-ish correlations became stronger, none were other than trivial (in some way comparing a variable to itself).
My guess, is that there just isn’t enough data yet, and we are almost 1/3 of the way through the season.
Der Spiegel has an interesting writeup on standard player contracts in the UK.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/football-leaks-unfair-contracts-for-women-players-a-1240038.html
I don’t think how the information is presented is well thought out.
In any event, if a male player gets seriously hurt and is missing from the team for 18 months; the team at that point is allowed to terminate that player’s contract.
The situation for females is different. They can be terminated after only 3 months.
Apparently no female has been terminated for being injured, but among the examples in this Spiegel article are Arsenal players from Germany.