THE LOWDOWN
Arsenal Women finish a breathless 2025 with a Subway Cup quarter-final tie away at Championship side Crystal Palace on Sunday lunchtime. The Gunners received a bye to the quarter-final and were spared the group stages due to their participation in the Champions League group phase. If Slegers’ side win, a semi-final at home to the winner of Spurs v Manchester United awaits.
It might be Arsenal’s last opportunity to win the Subway Cup for a while with reports that the Champions League participants will not be involved at all from next season. Then again, if the Gunners don’t secure a top three WSL finish maybe not! This has been a much more successful block for Arsenal since the international break with five wins from five.
The quality of the opposition does have to be factored in there, of course. January looks much more difficult with Manchester United and Chelsea in the WSL and the FIFA Champions Cup at the end of the month. However, Arsenal did produce some pretty underwhelming performances against teams from midtable and down prior to this, so I think it is fair to consider this as a building block.
But that is certainly contingent on beating Palace on Sunday. Though the Eagles have experienced an uptick in form of late under Jo Potter, winning their last five including an impressive away win at Bristol City on Wednesday and a 3-0 thrashing of top-flight Leicester City in their most recent game in this competition.
TEAM NEWS
Jenna Nighswonger is still out with a knock and with a January move away likely, has probably played her final game for the club. Victoria Pelova returns after missing the midweek match in Leuven due to illness. Daphne van Domselaar (quad), Chloe Kelly (knee), Manu Zinsberger and Katie Reid (both ACL) all miss this game.
Available squad
Goalkeepers: 28.Borbe 53.Liddiard
Defenders: 2.Fox 3.Wubben-Moy 5.L.Codina 6.Williamson 7.Catley 11.McCabe 24.Hinds 44.Harwood
Midfielders: 8.Mariona 10.Little(c) 12.L.Maanum 21.Pelova 32.Cooney-Cross
Forwards: 9.Mead 15.Smith 19.Foord 23.Russo 25.Blackstenius
A WORD FROM THE BOSS
‘If you look at how the season has gone, they’re of course on a very good run, I think five wins, a good win last Wednesday as well, so they’re building. If you look at their team, there is a lot of experience in the squad, WSL experience. So definitely it looks like a good run.
‘What we’ve seen of them so far is, if I summarise it, they liked to spend time in the attacking half and they press really high. Very aggressive, high pressure, but then from their own half, they can be quite direct getting into the attacking half, so that’s what we’re expecting.
‘Again, preparing for different scenarios, because they might choose to do something differently on Sunday. But that’s what we’ve seen of them so far and they’ve been effective of course, especially the last five games.’
LAST TIME OUT
When the teams met at Gander Green Lane in March, Arsenal ran out 4-0 winners with a brace from Beth Mead, a goal from Alessia Russo and a second half own goal.
THE OPPOSITION
Palace were relegated from the WSL last season having been promoted from the Championship in 2023-24. They sacked coach Laura Kaminski earlier this year and replaced her with Norwegian coach Leif Gunnar Smerud but he left once the season ended. This led to Rangers boss Jo Potter leaving Scotland to take over at the Eagles.
Palace had a slow start to the season with a lot of draws, winning one of their first eight WSL2 fixtures. However, they are enjoying a renaissance now with five wins on the bounce, pushing them up to 5th in WSL2 and they have qualified for the quarter-final of the Subway Cup and will play away at Chelsea in the 4th Round of the FA Cup.
The Eagles have experienced WSL players in their squad such as Chloe Arthur, Josie Green and Justine Vanhaevermaet, as well as big young talents on loan from the WSL like Lola Brown (Chelsea), Eve Annets (Manchester City) and Emma Watson (Manchester United).
PLAYER TO WATCH
Kyra Cooney-Cross has played the full 90 minutes in each of Arsenal’s last three games now. Against Real Madrid she was subbed in the 89th minute. Slowly but surely she has started to gain more and more of Renee Slegers’ trust. Kim Little’s injury opened the door for Kyra and Arsenal briefly switched to more of a 4141 formation with the Australian anchoring in midfield.
Since Kim Little returned, it has reverted to more of a double pivot and Little and Cooney-Cross has a nice balance to it with Little’s defensive instincts and recovery pace very sound and it has also allowed Mariona to play a little higher up. Cooney-Cross can be a difficult player to classify because she is a deep lying playmaker, she is very combative when the ball is ahead of her but isn’t always alive to danger in behind.
It is something that she has been working on in training. I strongly suspect that Kim Little will not start this game and that may mean Cooney-Cross in a pivot with Victoria Pelova, which is likely to have a slightly higher chaos factor against a Palace team that likes to be direct and to press. How Cooney-Cross handles this challenge will be very interesting.
MY PREDICTED LINE UP
Subs: 5.L.Codina 6.Williamson 8.Mariona 10.Little 11.McCabe 23.Russo 44.Harwood 53.Liddiard
HOW TO CATCH THE GAME
This match will be shown live on the WSL’s YouTube channel, a direct link to the game can be found here.
COMING UP
We will have the line-up posted about an hour before kickoff, Aidan Gibson’s on the whistle match report and every word of Renee Slegers’ post-match press conference on the site around an hour after full-time. Jamie and I will have a podcast for you on Monday, after which we will probably take a break until the New Year.
As ever, don’t forget to sign up to our free weekly Arsenal Women Newsletter here.