Arsenal’s poor start to the campaign means they are playing catch-up in the title race and their first priority is to secure a place in the top three – and Champions League football next season.<\/p>\n
The current European champions knew this was a crucial opportunity to close the gap at the top of the table. <\/p>\n
England captain Leah Williamson was in from the start for the first time this WSL season after recovering from a knee injury and was a threat with her build-up play from the back.<\/p>\n
But Arsenal’s creativity was not the problem – it was their ruthlessness in front of goal, which has been an issue all season.<\/p>\n
Asked if that was the main reason for “two points dropped” by Arsenal, Slegers said: “Yes, definitely. There is a lot of things we did really well in the game. <\/p>\n
“I think the game craft was good and how we dealt with different moments in the game, but the ball has to go in [the net]. That didn’t happen today.”<\/p>\n
While United did well to reduce Arsenal’s width, the Gunners still had plenty of opportunities to make their dominance count but they couldn’t capitalise on them.<\/p>\n
Russo came the closest with her efforts either side of the break, which called United goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce into action, while Little, Mariona Caldentey and Frida Maanum all sliced efforts high and wide.<\/p>\n
United did everything they could to disrupt Arsenal’s rhythm, with Tullis-Joyce going down to receive treatment at intervals when manager Marc Skinner needed to speak with his team.<\/p>\n
Arsenal were without midfielder Kyra Cooney-Cross after she returned to Australia this week to be with her mother, Jess, who has been diagnosed with incurable cancer.<\/p>\n
Supporters marching to the Emirates before kick-off held up placards that read: “We love you Kyra and Jess” and held them up in the stadium in the 32nd minute as fans applauded in support.<\/p>\n
Players also warmed up in shirts with Cooney-Cross’ name and number 32 on the back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal’s poor start to the campaign means they are playing catch-up in the title race and their first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-687036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115871637750946857","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}