FAWSL 2019/20: Everton Women vs Arsenal Women

As we head into the winter break in this year’s FAWSL campaign, no team had the ability to take their foot off the gas in any capacity. Arsenal Women travelled to Everton Women in a top-five clash this past Sunday. Joe Montemurro’s side have been in fine form and were looking to continue on this path as we prepare to enter the business end of the season. With Chelsea drawing to Liverpool 1-1, they had the chance to end 2019 top of the pile.

Everton Women have had a very encouraging season so far. Sitting in fifth place in the table, Willie Kurk has his side showing some much-improved form from last season. On 15 points already, they have already improved upon their total of 12 in 2018-19.

In this tactical analysis, we will look at Arsenal Women’s 3-1 victory over Everton Women in this final match of the calendar year. Everton’s tactics set up to try and frustrate the league leaders but were not successful. A mixture of Arsenal’s individual skill and Montemurro’s intricate tactics allowed the visiting side to have a great deal of success throughout the match breaking the Everton defence down.

Lineups

Heading into this match, both sides made multiple changes to the sides that started last weekend’s matches. For Montemurro, he went with Jill Roord in an advanced midfield position ahead of Jordan Nobbs. In defence, Viktoria Schnaderbeck replaced Beattie alongside Leah Williamson in the heart of defence. The two changes did not alter the general set-up of the side, however, with Montemurro’s tactics and structures totally ingrained in his side, top to bottom.

Kirk went for a very defensive structure as they hosted the league leaders. Moving away from his usual 4-5-1/ 4-3-3 set-up, Everton lined up in a 5-4-1. They looked to press high to direct Arsenal’s build-up before setting up in a deep block to defend with numbers for large periods of the match. This analysis will look at the positives and negatives of this set-up.