Frida Maanum sees off Leicester to give Arsenal some WSL respite

It has been a long week for Arsenal, but their hopes of Champions League football next season remain alive after Frida Maanum’s second-half goal earned them three points against a resurgent Leicester.

Jonas Eidevall’s team are struggling. The Gunners played a bruising and exhausting 120 minutes as they exited the Champions League to Wolfsburg on Monday. During that match, the defender Laura Wienroither became the latest Arsenal player to suffer an ACL injury to further deplete their forces – Beth Mead, Vivianne Miedema, Leah Williamson, Kim Little and Caitlin Foord are all currently absent.

In that sense there could not have been a better time for Leicester, newly lifted off the bottom of the table, to play the north London side. The trip to Borehamwood was not only advantageous given the state of Arsenal but it also came following their biggest ever Women’s Super League victory, a 4-0 win against Liverpool that followed a win at now bottom-placed Reading – their first back-to-back wins of the season.

Those are games they needed to pick up points in; against Arsenal, the expectations are far lower. The Gunners had won all three WSL games with the Foxes prior to their visit, scoring 13 goals without reply.

Their manager, Willie Kirk, has worked wonders since taking charge in November, finding and shaping an identity for a team that looked lost. He brought in young talent on loan in January and nabbed the services of the goalkeeper Janina Leitzig on loan from Bayern Munich.

He described the Arsenal game as “a free hit”, in that it wouldn’t impact their target points wise. But the impressive win against Liverpool had raised sights higher. “We go to Borehamwood on Friday night and expect to take something from the game now.