ndmw.bsky.social
@ndmw.bsky.social
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in previous seasons you've spoken about potentially wanting to see a back 3, and my mind does come back to how good russo was in sarina's 'emergency' wwc'23 formation.. so as a (most likely hypothetical) thought exercise, how do you imagine it would look if we opted to match chelsea's recent shape?
russo + stina from the start has had mixed success, but after a strong showing in this game do you believe this the set up that would give chelsea's backline a greater challenge? or do you think it leaves us too short in firepower off the bench?
chelsea aren't leicester, but especially if frida's recovering from a knock, i do feel we're more threatening with a stina-russo pairing than just russo on her own up top - especially if sonia keeps playing that back 3
biggest point of interest for me though is that even in this context pelova can't get a start and we've effectively sacrificed the stina super-sub to keep her on the bench 👀
has repeatedly reiterated how much she tries to isolate the team from outside noise, surely it is breaking through the wall and becoming at least slightly distracting that there's so much noise in the fanbase and media about the players who aren't getting many minutes 🤷‍♀️
renee having a preference for working with a smaller core group or just not rating a sizeable portion of the current squad - but either way i simply don't see how you bring in new faces to address any of the issues without moving other players on. because as much as she's a very offline person and
like surely we can't be planning to start a world cup in two years with bronze-greenwood as the fullback pairing, so this is absolutely the time to be looking into what the alternative options out there are
and crucially, the minutes she is getting are in a posession heavy team and now she's in a superior training environment surrounded by stronger talent than her previous club situation. so with the lack of 'natural' options for sarina there right now i definitely see the vision
my potential hot take is it makes total (more than ever) sense for hinds to be in the picture for the lionesses rn, even if she's not arsenal's regular starting LB. because tbh, even with a big reduction in competitive minutes she's still coming off the bench regularly w/ the occasional start -
meus brasileiros 👑🇧🇷🥰
really do believe arteta is a master at extracting absolute commitment from his players and turning the squad into a complete unit who will fight for each other to the end - so glad we can genuinely that this year with #5 finally gone from the club
a recent uptick in kcc minutes has coincided with a drop off in pelova's, and now we're back in a space of every game this season being must-win to stay in the running for silverware which may further limit chances for both to play together - do you still believe they are the future of our midfield?
no need to dispute the fact that alessia russo is v good at football, and yet she regularly doesn't seem to get anywhere near the volume of clear chances in a game as stina does (even playing 2-3 times her minutes) - so any ideas on how we can create more attacking threat with russo in the 9?
this may well age badly, but i'm truly looking forward to the brighton game on sunday. i felt like we just needed to get through the OL game with a scoreline that was respectable and not catastrophic for team morale, and now can hit a bit of a reset button and push on to restore some +ve momentum
in an effort to interrupt some of the doomspiralling, renee's postmatch comments (especially compared to last week) suggested she wasn't too downbeat on performances - did you pick out any positives which you'd like to see the team build on to close out this block of games?
2 games against top opposition within 4 days opens up a clear opportunity(/need) for renee to switch things up without necessarily being perceived as a message that recent team/sub selections have been flawed. Having dropped points in the wsl, is it now the OL fixture where more risks can be taken?
given her strong defensive stats (interceptions, recoveries etc), press resistance and increasing reluctance to take shots - if we were to go more 4-3-3 than 4-2-3-1 in order to play pelova/kcc in more natural roles, is there any reason not to rely on kim little as the deepest midfielder/'lone' 6?
great stuff - suspect this will have preempted many people's first Q's for the pod this week! fascinating timing for this to be spotlighted as an 'issue' right before the back-to-back city & OL fixtures which probs force renée's hand into making a few tweaks regardless of saturday's performance
reid and catley also v good again, but so obviously apparent how much this team misses leah's long balls when building attacks - especially when dvd looks to be carrying something which is hampering her distribution
frustrating one - especially because the area that will get inevitably face the most scrutiny is actually where I thought our starters were very good today (kim + mario), just unable to capitalise on the technical superiority so ended up drawn into a slugfest which suited villa more 😮‍💨
there's been a lot of squad turnover over the last 3-4 seasons at man utd, and yet arsenal have consistently struggled with the (a) fixtures at LSV - have you observed any trends across the games, or is this really a fixture to be analysed in isolation?
naturally i've seen anxieties about goals conceded but after 2 wsl games every attacker (+frida) has 1+ G/A to their name - so how encouraged are you by this high scoring start to the season, and have you seen enough variety in the goals to have confidence they won't dry up as the season progresses?
thoughts on the set pieces - may just be poor memory on my part, but don't recall mariona taking so many last season, especially with CK on the pitch, and we didn't seem to create much threat from them yesterday. is this something you picked up on at all during the preseason friendlies?