Arsenal Women Newsletter October 2026 mailbag
I asked for your questions for an October mailbag and you did not disappoint! Thanks so much to everyone that submitted and apologies to those I didn't get to!
1. Why are Arsenal’s set pieces so poor?
2. Arsenal and LCL both signed 8 new players in the summer. Why did people say it will take time for LCL’s team to gel, we won’t see the best of them yet, while insisting Arsenal will win the WSL?
3. With so many new players, who haven’t played at The Emirates before, has that big home advantage been temporarily lost?
Andrew Savage
Hey Andrew. Let’s take these in turn.
1. Simple, Arsenal don’t have enough players that are good at winning aerial duels. Arsenal regularly show up in the bottom half of the WSL for aerial duels won. Patrick Winqvist came in as setpiece coach and left. Chris Bradley came in as setpiece coach and left. Nikita Runnacles has come in this summer and there’s not much improvement in this area. Coaches and routines can’t trump attributes. The same way a good manager might get an average team to a certain level but won’t win the league because talent is what matters most. The setpieces started to decline as soon as players like Rafaelle and Ilestedt came out of the team.
2. I guess because Arsenal were starting from a higher point. Arsenal were also not shy about saying their big ambition for the season was to win the WSL. LCL have done very well indeed, but I do think the fixture list has some impact here. I think we’ll know more about LCL once they play City, Chelsea and Arsenal.
3. Maybe, but I don’t think that’s really it. We have also only played two games at the Emirates so far so I think it’s too small a sample size to read into anything just yet. If we don’t beat Birmingham on Saturday, then I think it would be a good time to revisit this question!
Do you think Renee is too frightened to drop Leah Williamson who is currently out of form because of her "National Treasure" status
James Barr
No, I think she isn’t dropping her because she is playing reasonably well. I think the Paris FC penalty is really sticking in people’s minds here. Maybe she didn’t cover herself in glory for the first Paris goal either (and I do think her and Lotte are a tad too similar to be an effective partnership). Other than that, I think she is playing fine and I share Sarina Wiegman’s sense of confusion when a similar question was put to her last week and I echo Wiegman's answer.
In my view, something similar happens with Saka in the men’s team. We love these players so much, especially since they come through our system and I think that means we become highly anxious about them and start probing for faults.I wrote about this in reference to Williamson a couple of seasons ago.
I think Arsenal’s centre-backs have come under more pressure in recent games because changes to the centre of midfield have disrupted how Arsenal press. It has been much easier to run at Arsenal through the middle of the pitch since the Little Mariona partnership was changed and the centre-backs have a higher workload as a result. Even so, I think she is broadly playing pretty well, probably not at her absolute threshold, but well enough.
With so many Arsenal places scoring in the international break, notably players without much game time such as Reuteler, Smith and Maanum, can this give us any confidence going into the next block that Renée will start to better utilise the squad? Mike Neale
Arsenal players have already had a wildly successful international break in front of goal. How much should we read into this versus their club form and what (if any) notes should Renee be taking on how these players are being deployed by their countries? Lauren S
I will take these together since they are similar and I suspect a lot of Arsenal fans have been wondering the same thing (I know I have too!) On squad utilisation, to be honest I think Arsenal are in a rough spot and when that happens, continuity is usually the way to go. I think Arsenal need to get their foot back on the ladder and win a game or two. All the other bigger picture stuff can wait until that happens. Confidence is such a huge issue at the moment and only good results will fix that.
As to whether we take anything from players scoring for their countries. Yes and no. On one hand, international teams tend to have a high level of continuity and consistency. If you look at the line-ups Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Norway and England put out, a lot of those teams and players have been together years and years. At this moment in time Arsenal are transitioning personnel in a way that those NTs are not.
However, I think it would be foolish to totally handwave it. Arsenal and Slegers have to harness it and use it as energy for themselves starting this weekend. But I am sure the likes of Reuteler, Maanum and Smith probably were thinking in the back of their minds, ‘see!’ when the ball hit the net. It is probably a small indictment but it’s one Renee and staff need to focus on using to their advantage now. If confidence and energy are low, a bit of righteousness can still create a spark. In the words of Zach de la Rocha, anger is a gift!
To me the slow start to the season has been, while disappointing, entirely predictable given that we added 8 new players in the summer and introduced 4 of them into the starting XI. Every time such a huge turnover happens at a club, nearly every team I can remember (including us) falters at the start of the season as it takes time for these players to integrate. Add into that the fact that we had the hardest opening block of anyone in the league, according to Opta. Why do you think there’s been so much collective amnesia about this and lack of patience? Is it due to the bar the players and staff set so publicly? Is it just down to the size of the fan base and people know they’ll get engagement about topics like this? Is it due to the calibre of the players we brought in, that they were expected to click immediately?
Basically: this was obviously going to happen, why are people forgetting the context here? Adina
I think there is definitely a lot of truth here, it is something Jamie and I discussed a lot on the pod over the summer, we feared that so much change in one summer would take its toll in the early weeks. I think the fixture list, to some extent, exacerbated that, yes. If I am going to have a bit of a self righteous whinge, I understand and endorse the need for the WSL to put the big games at opportune moments but I don’t think anyone should have Chelsea and City away back-to-back. I think that unbalances the fixture list too much and essentially Arsenal are sort of victims of the fact that broadcasters know they will pack out away ends.
In some respects we were pretty unfortunate to run into the two hardest fixtures of the season when we were at our lowest ebb, confidence wise. But I also don’t think you can totally attribute Arsenal’s poor start to this. Arsenal are 10th and have scored four WSL goals, I just don’t think that is close to good enough and there isn’t nearly enough mitigation for that.
I think if I could identify a definite style or pattern and felt it was taking time to take hold that would be one thing. I am afraid it has felt more like Arsenal are crashing from one game to the next like a boat caught in a squall. If Arsenal had beaten United and Palace at home and lost at Chelsea and City in the manner they did I might be more prepared to accept that as a total explanation, or something close to it. In that scenario, the title race would not be over either.
It’s definitely a factor but I don’t think anyone would have thought we would go into the first international break in 10th, with four goals and a 10 point deficit to the league leaders. That is a failure with multiple authors, squad overhaul is a big one, but there are too many other segments to that pie.
My question is about the team around Renee and how they function (recognizing that you are not actually inside the club): Do you have the sense that Renee is almost overly collaborative and therefore does not take a heavier hand in appropriate areas? Does the large staff further muddle her thinking and decision making?
In particular, it seems like Renee and Aaron are almost a head coaching “team”. She has said he handles out of possession tactics and he is very vocal and active on the bench. Even moreso than Renee at times. That’s not a dynamic I see with other teams, though of course assistants communicate with players. Not to mention the fact that Aaron and others have been around for the previous manager, or three (in Aaron’s case).
In my opinion, freshening up the coaching staff, assuming Renee remains, might help with this ongoing stagnation. Thatonegirl
In times of strife, your style will always begin to look like a weakness. But I don’t think that’s a wild speculation over ‘coaching by committee.’ I have no idea, obviously, but it could be true, yes. I certainly think at times a coach has to ‘switch up’, which was what I was getting at when I wrotethis piece about there being some value in Renee getting angry in Paris.
In terms of the overall coaching staff, Elliot Allum came onto the staff last season, Nikita Runnacles replaced Chris Bradley as setpiece coach. The analysis staff has undergone some changes. There have been a couple of academy changes too with Pauline MacDonald coming in as Player Pathway Manager and there is a new Head of Academy (I have an appalling short-term memory and have forgotten her name!) but they don’t coach the senior team.
Whether it needs new blood alongside Renee, I am not sure to be honest. Aaron is a very highly rated coach and he is, as you observe, highly involved with training, game plans and coaching. But I honestly don’t know whether a new voice or a fresh set of ideas is needed there. It is not something I have heard mentioned from any sources, personally, but I don't get to hear about everything.
For me the question I would like an answer to from the club is about recruitment. Namely is there recruitment/ scouting structure and if so who is in it. Also how does the club decide a target player/ position that's needed and most of all does Renee have the final say on whom we sign. Unless there are hidden injuries or issues why have we wasted money on Reuteler and Cerci if we do not trust them enough to play? we would have been better off using those funds to go big on a real ceiling raiser? Dave Brown
There is a recruitment team, yes. Firstly, the women’s team have access to all the same scouting and recruitment software as the men’s team. Recruitment and ID is led by Kevin Murphy. Jodie Taylor is involved there too. Clare Wheatley deals with a lot of the negotiation and agent side. That is the part Renee wants essentially no involvement in. But Renee does have a say, yes.I asked her about it when she took the job on a full-time basis.
‘What I am very aware of is that you can very easily get dragged into things with agents and recruitment and squad planning. But we have other people working with that around the team, so I have to make sure that my role is working with the players that are here and having the right moments of input in what I think we need and what players would improve us and what players would add for us. I am involved but we need to streamline that so the processes are very clear and I can have my main focus here.’
But yes, I share some reservations over how the attack was added to over the summer given the usage of some of those signings. I also think we are too often seeing players signed that the manager is clearly lukewarm about. That being the case, I think she either has to vouch harder for the players she wants or veto more assertively, or else she just has to crack on and use the players she is given.
Given that the size of the squad will naturally keep opposition coaches guessing about how arsenal will line up for a match (and who the subs will be), is this a time for the club to reconsider their stance of being very quiet about player fitness and follow in the steps of NWSL teams and Aston Villa?
It seems like one (admittedly small) area where some pressure could be lifted off Renee if greater transparency around who's carrying a knock/managing an issue leads to less fan and media discourse around the topic of "but why isn't xxx being trusted to play more..." For example, putting CK's Schrodinger’s injury to one side, we've just seen Cerci pull out of Germany's squad and Olivia Smith limited to playing 45 mins ndmw
I completely agree but I guess the club have to calculate the 'negative' of fans sometimes wondering why players aren’t playing without having full context against the 'positive' of opponents not having that sort of intel. I don’t honestly know the answer to that and will always be biased by my perspective but I think greater transparency would certainly help, yes and I think it is something the club ought to consider.
Hi Tim! At the start of last season, there were big questions over the lack of game time for KCC. Then, after Kim got injured and some trial and error with Pelova, she finally got a good run of games. With Mariona unfortunately looking set to miss some games, who in the team do you think can ‘benefit’ the most à la KCC? Will Liv be back starting on the left? Is this Géry’s time to show why she was signed? Izzy
I love this question because this was what I was considering writing about for this week’s newsletter! In a very strange way I have felt for a few weeks that Renee and staff perhaps ‘need’ a couple of injuries to streamline the amount of choices available in the pursuit of some continuity. I would not have picked Mariona as one of my sacrificial lambs, but here we are!
Olivia Smith has to be the big winner here, really. I don’t entirely understand her recent spell out of the team other than because Renee perhaps wanted to keep Kim and Mariona together, albeit one line up in the midfield where they have basically played as dual 10s. I think results there have been mixed.
Reuteler and Frida seem to both be suffering because they are quite similar but because there are now two other number 9s, the temptation to put Russo back in the 10 and bring the strikers on has limited their chances. But Reuteler simply has to be a winner here, otherwise I think we can comfortably start to say that Arsenal wasted her time by signing her.
For me, I think what I really want to see is Russo as a 9 with two quick, high volume shooters like Smith and Baum out wide. I could certainly see Reuteler fitting in there as a box crasher when Russo drops deep. I can see that front four working in theory and I would at least like to see why that theory is flawed! However, overall I worry about our creativity without Mariona, I predict that by December the refrain of ‘we miss Mariona’s creativity so much!’ will be very regular. Anyone struggling to ‘see’ this player is going to see it for the next block while she is not there, I can promise that much. It is a significant miss.