Arsenal Women face an inflection point in managerial search
Today at 12:59 PM
Renée Slegers has done a fine job as interim, but Arsenal are reaching a stage where they need to make a decision regarding the rest of the season.
In a lot of ways, while challenging, being an interim head coach is a quite easy role. Your job is to make everyone happier, be a safe pair of hands, and make one or two tweaks. If it goes well, you get praised; if it goes poorly, it's usually the previous manager's fault. It is within that context that Arsenal must think about where the season goes next. Speaking at the beginning of the month, Renée Slegers confirmed she was going to be the interim for this block. But with the block over after Thursday's Champions League fixture against Juventus, Arsenal are no closer to appointing a replacement after Jonas Eidevall resigned last month.
Slegers has done everything that would've been asked of her. Everyone is smiling, at the moment, and Arsenal have won 5 of the 6 games under her charge (the other game was a credible 1-1 draw at Manchester United that Arsenal dominated). Slegers has used her previous position, as a development coach, while she's been interim, with Leah Williamson saying, "She has connected with everyone individually. We got into a bit of a rut with low confidence and she has just stripped it back and wants the best out of every player." She's also made a few tactical tweaks, with Alessia Russo saying, "She has allowed us a little bit of freedom up there and we are really enjoying it." However, stylistically, many of the principles of play are the same as they were under Jonas Eidevall—after all, she was on Eidevall's staff, having also replaced him at Rosengård.
Slegers has made some tweaks, with the most notable one being Steph Catley's usage at centre back. Normally a left back, Catley's left footedness has opened up passing lanes, but also enabled Arsenal to build with three, with Catley, Leah Williamson, and the excellent Emily Fox. Under Eidevall, Arsenal regularly built from wide to in, using the full backs in a line of four. With three, Arsenal are filling all 5 lanes of attack, with Katie McCabe overlapping and Mariona Caldentey coming inside as a second #10. This has allowed Arsenal to better sustain attacks and to build more threateningly in central areas further up the pitch. For a team that utilized the wide areas a lot under Eidevall, all three of the goals at the weekend and three of the four goals against Juventus came from accessing central spaces in the penalty box.
With the winter break in the WSL coming up soon, Arsenal are at an inflection point. Should they hire a new manager, that person would have a mini pre-season at the beginning of January to try to get some principles of play understood. But with that point rapidly occuring, there should also be some thought to leaving Slegers as the interim manager for the rest of the season, especially if results and performances continue to be good. What Slegers has done has removed some immediacy for Arsenal. This, however, doesn't necessarily mean she should be the new permanent manager, but keeping her in an interim role gives some stability for the rest of the season, while also allowing Arsenal to make the right choice. The next manager is going to inherit a team that is quite similar to the team that Joe Montemurro managed in 2021: both starting central midfielders are over the age of 30, and every single natural wide player will be over the age of 29 by the end of the season. In short, the next manager is going to have to see a rebuilding of Arsenal's squad.
Keeping Slegers as interim will also require more prominence from Clare Wheatley, the head of Women's Football at Arsenal. As interim, Slegers will have less influence over transfer targets and contract renewals, which will fall to Wheatley. Arsenal have conducted summer business without a manager before, with mixed results. In 2022, Arsenal, under the direction of Wheatley, signed Mana Iwabuchi, Nikita Parris, and Frida Maanum. Iwabuchi and Parris were never quite Jonas Eidevall players, but Maanum decidedly was.
There are risks associated with deciding that Slegers is the interim for the rest of the season. It's still not apparent how Slegers will handle the necessity of rotation, or what to do when teams catch on to Arsenal's minor tweaks. But there is also a looming inflection point. It is to Slegers' credit that she is still in the conversation at this stage, but Arsenal will have to make a decision, even if it is just to stand pat.
