The core

When the pressure cooker ratchets up, managers really show you who they trust. Managers will always be diplomatic about the quality of their options publicly, but their selection patterns will always reveal the players they trust the most. Who plays the highest number of minutes when available? How does a manager address a selection dilemma for a big game?

Games don’t come much bigger than Arsenal’s UWCL qualifier against Hacken last night. 1-0 down from the first leg having fallen at the qualifying stage last season, everything was on the line. I doubt Jonas Eidevall would have been sacked immediately had Arsenal not progressed but it certainly would have pushed him closer to the precipice at a minimum.

So who did he select? Lia Walti came back into the team for the first time this season. Beth Mead did not perform brilliantly in the first leg of this tie and started on the bench against Manchester City on Sunday. Caitlin Foord started on the right against City and played really well and should have had a goal to show for her performance but for an errant offside flag.

Mead came on to score the equaliser and both Mead and Foord have been core players for Eidevall (as they were for Joe Montemurro). In the end, Mead got the nod and I imagine that decision was informed by Mead’s consistent record of end product. Even if she doesn’t play well, she will probably score or make a goal. She played well against Hacken but, more to the point almost, she scored a great goal.

I put it to Jonas Eidevall last night that starting Lia Walti probably wasn’t a complicated decision but that leaving out Kyra Cooney-Cross, who has enjoyed a strong start to the season, was. ‘It is really important in building against Hacken and exploiting them that we had offensive full-backs and investing there, so we needed to balance that out against a strong counter attacking team. We know that Wally is very good at organising our attacks and our defence.

‘It was basically that, Wally’s qualities in organising and the counter pressure and to be more aggressive with Kim in our pressure, we needed to cover around. I am very lucky, Kyra has started the season tremendously but now I can choose to get some other attributes on the pitch.’ It is a totally sound tactical explanation and the subtext here is this. When the season was on the line, Walti played. The fact that she scored a rare goal was a nice bonus.

But the Swiss midfielder has been one of Arsenal’s most important players since the day she walked through the doors at London Colney. She was Joe Montemurro’s first signing and even though the excellent Dominique Janssen was well valued in the defensive midfield position, Montemurro saw Walti as the key to his style of football and so it proved. Walti has changed her role slightly under Jonas Eidevall.

Under Montemurro she played as a lone six, collecting and distributing while the likes of Jordan Nobbs, Danielle van de Donk and Kim Little scuttled off ahead of her. Under Eidevall, Arsenal play more of a double pivot and Walti and Little have developed a strong partnership that has been the bedrock of this Arsenal team for many years now.

They swap over when it comes to collecting the ball from the centre-backs to prevent opponents from being able to ‘sit’ on one of them, which started to become an issue in the latter spell of Montemurro’s reign. Walti plays as much more of a left central midfielder and is asked to push up and help Arsenal’s counter pressure.

Eidevall doesn’t really play a double pivot as a defensive move, it is more of an attacking move, to have the midfielders positioned around the edge of the area when the team attacks so that they can collect clearances, recycle the ball and keep opponents under pressure. Walti has adapted excellently to a very different role. It is almost akin to the change in emphasis her compatriot Granit Xhaka underwent in the men’s team. Walti is Arsenal’s north star.

Beth Mead has a similar supremacy in the Arsenal attack. She remains, in my view, Arsenal’s most reliable and consistent provider of goals and assists. Since Emily Fox arrived at the club, Mead has been picking up more central positions in build-up, as well as finding herself in strong finishing positions in the box as she always has done. When I spoke to her after the game  Mead confirmed that Arsenal aspire to be more fluid in attack now.

‘We try to bring super strengths out of each other, we know what we are each good at. I try to play inside, Stina and Lessi can play outside. In the first leg we didn’t get it as fluid as we would have liked to. Today it looked and felt a lot better and I think we got much more out of each other’s games.’ And when it comes to core players, few have proved more robust and important than Katie McCabe. After a strong performance against City on Sunday, Eidevall pointed to the player’s reliability.

‘Steph Catley not being available, you see how reliable Katie is and has been for us, being able to put in big shifts.’ Kim Little and Manu Zinsberger have played pretty much every minute of the qualifying rounds as well as the draw against City. (I have some quotes from Jonas Eidevall on Zinsberger’s leadership which will be published on Arseblog News at 2pm on Friday). McCabe joined Arsenal in 2015, Mead in 2017, Walti in 2018 and Zinsberger in 2019. When everything was on the line, it was the core that Jonas Eidevall leant on to see the team over the line.