Beth Mead joined Arsenal in January 2017. Arsenal had tried to sign her a year earlier but Mead wanted to finish her studies closer to home. Her goal scoring record at Sunderland was, frankly, intimidating. 2011-12, 23 goals in 23 games in the WPL. In 2012-13 she scored 30 goals in 28 matches in the WPL. 13 goals in Sunderland’s promotion winning season from WSL2.
Then in her first season in the top flight, Mead won the Golden Boot with 12 goals in 14 appearances, the youngest ever Golden Boot winner. Mead made her name as the finest young striker in the country. She finally signed for Arsenal in January 2017 in what was a pretty strange time for the club. Under Pedro Losa, there was a high turnover of players in and out.
Just a few months after Mead signed, Arsenal signed Vivianne Miedema from Bayern Munich. Miedema, also a central striker, was a must sign player. It left Losa with the issue of having the two best young strikers in Europe in a one striker system. Losa was not afraid to shuffle players around, most of the time it didn’t really work. He moved Beth Mead to the right wing. That one really worked.
Mead had never played there before but her relentlessness was well suited to the role and, as she has done with everything in her career, Mead threw herself into the challenge head long. That’s the thing about Beth, she rises to challenges. In fact, sometimes you suspect that she needs it, she thrives on it. Doubt, adversity, these always seemed to be elements that made her explode.
In 2018-19, she broke the WSL record for assists in a season (12) as Arsenal won the WSL title. In Joe Montemurro’s style of total football, with Miedema, Nobbs and van de Donk interchanging at will, it was Mead who was the team’s chief creator. To have evolved from a top-class penalty box striker to a top-class winger so quickly is testament to Mead’s work ethic and her football intelligence.
Things fizzled out for the team under Montemurro thereafter. Mead had probably her most average season for Arsenal during 2020-21 when it was clear that Montemurro’s time was coming to an end. (Though she still provided the second highest number of assists in the league). I always felt that Mead was an electric charge player, someone who responded to either adversity or energy.
I think the behind closed doors era of 2020-21 didn’t suit her, she feeds off energy and creates sparks and that is much harder to do behind closed doors. Jonas Eidevall was appointed in the summer of 2021 and his high energy, high pressing style suited Mead down to the ground.
Eidevall would go on to say, ‘Sometimes when you come into a team as a coach and you have seen players playing on video and you have an idea of them but she’s one of those I saw her, I saw positive things in her but she absolutely blew my mind with her qualities when I came here.’
It wasn’t just the move to a more high pressing style that supercharged Mead. She had been left out of the Team GB Olympics squad in the summer of 2021 and, once again, she channelled that frustration and put together an all-timer of a season in 2021-22, culminating in her winning the Golden Boot and Player of the Tournament as England won the European Championships.
Mead suffered a setback and responded by keeping her head down, working hard and roaring back. She finished second in the Ballon D’Or voting in 2022. When you pinpoint the explosion in interest in Arsenal Women and the swelling crowds, nobody can take a greater share of credit than Beth. Not only because of her on pitch exploits.
A lot of Arsenal fans are Arsenal fans because of Beth. As well as her high quality output, Mead always took time for fans, often having to be dragged off the pitch by medical staff after games because she was so busy signing shirts and posing for autographs. Mead has been willing to be vulnerable in the public eye too.
Her ACL rupture in November 2022 felt especially cruel, chopping her down in the form of her career (in a situation akin to her friend Jordan Nobbs, who also tore her ACL at the height of her powers). Beth has been consistently open and vulnerable about the impact of the death of her mother June in January 2023.
No athlete or public figure has a responsibility to do this, of course. But Mead has shown a human side that fans have related to. ‘Her success hasn’t changed her,’ Jonas Eidevall once remarked. In the last two seasons, she has taken on a slightly reduced role but still a role of great importance, adapting her game again under Renee Slegers. Her assist in the 2025 Champions League Final showed that a player who had often created with acts of electricity had cultivated cooler technical edge.
She could have left last summer, of course. When London City Lionesses made a significant offer which the club accepted. Mead decided to stay on for one more season and given the transfer she is about to make, she made the right decision for her career. Beth spoke to this site many times over the years and I can only say that every occasion was a pleasure. She always made time and you never had the impression you were talking to a star, even though you were.
It’s difficult to become a legend at Arsenal Women. The bar is absurdly high. Beth Mead clears that bar.
My niece with a shirt that Beth signed for her
Walking to the stadium with my daughter