The Masterplan?

I’m not saying right is wrong

At the heart of the break up of Oasis was a gradual shift in dynamic between Liam and Noel Gallagher. On ‘Definitely Maybe’, Liam took lead vocal on all 11 tracks. On ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’ Noel sings one track. That ratio is mimicked on ‘Be Here Now.’

However, Liam’s ‘flaky’ approach to starting and finishing gigs meant Noel increasingly took on vocal duties on tour out of necessity. In the 2016 documentary about the band’s rise, ‘Supersonic’, Noel admits that he began to think of himself more as a singer over time, which intruded on his brother’s territory.

‘That girl’s looking at me, this is alright, innit?’ he jokes. Meanwhile, Liam became increasingly frustrated with Noel’s desire to build in an acoustic, Noel sung section in each setlist. ‘I’m on and off stage like Punch and fookin Judy’ Liam lamented. ‘I’m a singer and I love doing it and when I am not allowed to do it, I’m not happy.’ In a later magazine interview, when Noel was asked why he was assuming lead vocal duties on more and more on the band’s albums, he put it down to Liam losing confidence in his delivery and handing songs back to him.

What, pray tell, does any of this have to do with Arsenal Women? Well, Arsenal used to have a virtuoso, Liam Gallagher like frontwoman in Vivianne Miedema (I am uncertain as to whether she would appreciate that analogy). Under Jonas Eidevall, Arsenal have moved away from this model and more towards a shared goals model. Stina Blackstenius was bought in January 2022 and Miedema moved into a deeper, more creative role. Eventually, that model dissipated too and Miedema and Arsenal went their separate ways.

In the summer of 2023, Arsenal bought Alessia Russo, a top class forward but not someone who had ever been prolific in front of goal to the level of a Miedema, Sam Kerr or Bunny Shaw. Likewise, Blackstenius has always been a steady source of goals but never quite an absolute surefire guarantee of them. In terms of overall centre-forward depth, few teams in the world can boast a pair of options as strong as Russo and Blackstenius.

This model has many strengths, it builds depth and resilience and allows Eidevall to adapt his team selections to his opponent’s weaknesses. Blackstenius tends to start games against bigger opponents who play higher defensive lines because of her ability to run in behind.  She started the recent game against Manchester City while Russo dropped to the bench.  When Blackstenius starts, sometimes Russo drops into a deeper number 10 role.

Again, all of this is logical and explicable. However, sport, like life, is full of paradoxes. I wonder whether this shared responsibility upfront, even if it is 70% Russo to 30% Blackstenius, is preventing Russo from unlocking her true goal scoring potential to authorise Eidevall’s claim that she is ‘the best finisher I have ever worked with.’ There are pros and cons of having a main goal scorer versus sharing goals around but, the fact of the matter is that Arsenal scored 53 WSL goals last season and were one of two WSL teams to underperform their XG.

Chelsea, for whom Sam Kerr is an obvious taliswoman, scored 71 goals (albeit Kerr missed the second half of the season) and City, spearheaded by Bunny Shaw, scored 61. Arsenal finished five points behind Chelsea and City and had they been a few goals closer to City and Chelsea’s tallies, they surely would have been more competitive in the title race. Kerr and Shaw are reliable, copperplated sources of goals and both teams have a supporting cast of secondary goal scorers buttressing them.

Arsenal’s defeats to West Ham, Liverpool and Spurs are widely cited as major reasons for their failure to compete for the title last season and rightly so. Ultimately, the big issue for me is that Liverpool and Spurs kept clean sheets in two of those games. Going a goal down to Liverpool or Spurs is not ideal but if you have the ability to score a lot of goals, you can usually overturn those deficits.

While I like and appreciate having two really good strikers, I think that sometimes you need an absolute killer to turn games for you. Kerr has performed this role for Chelsea on countless occasions, on days when they are a little less than perfect, Kerr can find them a goal. Miedema also did this on countless occasions during the Joe Montemurro era.

In 2019-20, there was a home game against Liverpool in which Arsenal probably performed worse than they did in that same fixture last season. They were pretty dire. But they won 1-0. And Miedema scored. On Sunday, Arsenal did something similar. They were leggy and sluggish against Leicester but they won 1-0 via a Frida Maanum goal. That is a quality that Arsenal are going to have to show on a few more occasions yet this season.

But sometimes I wonder whether the split striker model is preventing Russo from truly assuming the crown as Arsenal’s principal goal scorer because I think she has that potential to reach that level. For now, I still consider Beth Mead to be the player I would bet on to score *that* goal. Like I said, there are a lot of wider benefits for the team in having a shared goals model but there are a lot of benefits to having a player that can find you a goal from nowhere regularly.

And I wonder for Russo whether sometimes playing as a 10 and sometimes sitting on the bench feels a little like Liam Gallagher sitting on the side of the stage and watching Noel strap on the acoustic guitar…