Vivianne Miedema has taken the FA Womens Super League by storm. The previous highest number of goals scored in a single season of the FAWSL was Ellen White’s 11 goals for Birmingham City last season. However, with seven FAWSL games still to go, Vivianne Miedema has already broken the record and has set a new one: she’s become the first striker to score more than 20 league goals.
Miedema came to Arsenal at the beginning of the 2017/18 season from Bayern Munich. At that time she was one of the hottest young talents in the world. With Bayern, she’d won the Bundesliga twice in three seasons (being the runners up once). She’s also a regular with the Netherlands senior team, having earned 51 caps.
Her first season with Arsenal was lukewarm, as she only played 852 minutes and scored four goals. Arsenal lost out on a Champions League spot by one point. This season, however, she’s been in stunning form. She seems to have put the previous season behind her and is back to rediscovering her old form from Bayern Munich. In this player analysis piece, we’ll look at what makes her the lethal goalscorer that she is.
Miedema: The inside forward
Arsenal, under Joe Montemurro, have tried different formations including a 4-2-3-1, a 4-1-4-1, and recently a 4-3-3. All of them feature Miedema as the central striker. Although she plays a host of different roles, her most common roles are twofold: either to play as an inside forward, or to be the focal point of crosses into the box.
As an inside forward, her main job is running onto through-balls from the left midfielder. She attacks the channels or the half-spaces (usually the left) in between the opposition centre-back and full-back. She then uses her excellent dribbling to beat her defender or at least draw the centre-back out, which can then create space for other teammates so that they can get a shot off themselves.
Her dribbling is a major asset of her game, which is why she often tends to move out on the flank and then look to take on the full-back to shoot or play a pass across the 18-yard box. She attempts a whopping total of 6.01 dribbles per 90 minutes at a success rate of 66.5%.
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