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The Women’s Super League season usually ends with a number of goodbyes, but no season has arguably reached its climax with as many landmark conclusions as this one. The final day of the season featured farewells from Emma Hayes, Fran Kirby, Steph Houghton, and, most pertinently for this piece, Vivianne Miedema.
Arsenal’s decision not to renew her expiring contract whipped up intense emotion among fans, mostly ranging from confusion to disgust. Miedema is the WSL’s record goalscorer, and is beloved by the Arsenal fanbase. The last 18 months of her career were hugely disrupted by an ACL injury, so we haven’t seen the best (or much) of her this season, and as I took my seat in the Mangata Pay UK stadium for Arsenal’s final game of the campaign, an odd feeling pervaded the ground.
The game against Brighton had no implications beyond the 90 minutes, which allowed my mind to oscillate between trying to comprehend why Miedema has been allowed to leave, and why Arsenal’s season was ending in relative disappointment.
Despite achieving the same as the previous campaign (3rd place and Continental Cup winners), the context for this season was markedly different. Last time out, a smaller squad was wrecked by severe injuries. Arsenal were half-football club/half-hospital ward, so to end that season with anything deserved praise.
However, this season saw them make significant moves in the transfer market. Now with two decent players in most positions, improvement was expected. A title and Champions League challenge was to be taken as read.
So why didn’t that happen? Thinking back over Arsenal’s four WSL defeats, I realised that the Kubler-Ross model was one way to make sense of it all:
October 1, 2023: Denial
The fans turned up to Emirates Stadium in an anticipatory mood for the opening game of the season against Liverpool. Arsenal had already been eliminated from the Champions League qualifiers by Paris FC. But there was mitigation. The early start to the…
Source link : https://www.footballparadise.com/arsenal-women-2023-24-a-wsl-season-review/
Author : Shane Thomas
Publish date : 2024-06-11 13:30:00
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