Women’s Champions League 2022/23: How Arsenal’s defensive organisation and attacking play set the tone against Lyon – tactical analysis

On Wednesday night, European Champions Lyon began the defence of their title against Arsenal at the Groupama Stadium. Lyon came into the match in a confident mood as they had not lost a competitive home game since April 2021.

Arsenal travelled to France in a good run of form themselves as they had won four out of the last five games in all competitions.

Both teams have a history in the competition with Lyon looking to retain its title and win it for the seventh time, while Arsenal dream of winning the competition for the second time in their history, after their success in 2007.

It was Arsenal who started their campaign in style as they emphatically ended Lyon’s home record with a 5-1 victory. The Gunners came with a clear game plan and Jonas Eidevall’s team implemented it perfectly, scoring four goals in the first half.

In this tactical analysis, we will focus on Arsenal’s tactics and analyse the teams attacking and defensive performance and how it proved too much for Lyon.

Lineups

Lyon manager Sonia Bompastor continued her flexibility by switching from the 4-1-4-1 formation Lyon used in their previous game, to a 4-3-3 formation. As you can see below Bompastor has been very adaptable with her approach so far this season, switching between five different formations.

Lyon continued to be without several players for this game as Ada Hegerberg and Delphine Cascarino were both ruled out after the pair picked up injuries on international duty. They were also without Griedge Mbock, Ellie Carpenter, Catarina Macario and Sara Dabritz, who all missed out through injury.

Janice Caymen came into the starting eleven after getting forty-five minutes as a substitute in the 3-1 victory against Bordeaux on Sunday

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