Arsenal Women dominate a resolute Everton Ladies

Everton lost to current WSL front runners Arsenal 4-0, but don’t let the scoreline fool you. That’s actually a decent result against the massively talented team. The Blues’ first game back after the departure of head manager Andy Spence was nothing to be ashamed of.

Just take a look at some recent results for the Gunners, which includes wins against: Liverpool (5-0), Yeovil Town (7-0), Chelsea (5-0), and Reading (6-0).

There were some positives during the match:

Everton goalkeeper Kirstie Levell had quite a few amazing saves, like this one:

Everton held Vivianne Miedema to a brace, instead of a hat-trick

The WSL October Player of the Month has scored 3 hat-tricks in 7 games and is on track to break the record for most goals in a WSL season, so holding her to only 2 goals in a match is really quite something.

Everton’s defense shut out the Gunners for almost the entire first half:

Arsenal’s Danielle van de Donk explained it this way:

“Everton tried to disrupt us, they often only had one player up front and looked to defend deep against, which is their decision.”

The Blues showed that they had the discipline to deny the Gunners any goals for almost 45 minutes. Arsenal dominated possession at 69%

Everton had their chances on the counter attack:

Striker Hannah Cain had a goal deflected wide in the first half. The Toffees need to work on their accuracy, as they had 8 shots but only 3 of them on target.

The Toffees were led by caretaker Jen Herst, a goalkeeping coach with 8 years of experience working with the FA, Man City, and Liverpool. She won the FA’s Pro Game Female Development Coach of the Year in 2014.

Photo by Nathan Stirk/Getty Images

Here are 3 of 4 Arsenal goals:

Danielle Donk made it 1-0 right before the end of the 1st half:

Jordan Nobbs made it 2-0:

One of Vivianne Miedema’s two goals:

Next up:

Everton play Reading, who they beat in a cup game earlier this season.

Angharad James told the WSL’s website that Everton could get their first league win next week:

“We will need to carry out our game plan for the full 90 minutes, because at the minute we are playing well for 20 or 40-minute spells, but we need to be more consistent and stick to it for the full 90 minutes.

“We have to go there with our heads held high, we have to take the positives that we can from today’s game, build on the negatives in training this week and hopefully go there and pick up the three points.”

CYBG!

Everton (4-4-2): Kirstie Levell; Faye Bryson, Georgia Brougham, Gabby George, Chantelle Boye-Hlorkah; Chloe Kelly, Megan Finnigan, Angharad James, Inessa Kaagman, Simone Magill, Hannah Cain

Substitutes: Claudia Walker for Kaagman 57, Elise Hughes for Cain 73

Substitutes not used: Rebecca Flaherty, Taylor Hinds, Dominique Bruinenberg