The League Cup final will define The Vibes for Arsenal this season

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I am usually someone who writes about data and tactical trends that can be analyzed through fairly objective processes. And by any objective measure, Arsenal women are doing just fine this season. Not amazing, not their best, but fine. Conversely, by everyone’s feelings — including my own — something is going terribly wrong for the Gunners.

Superstar attackers Vivianne Miedema and Beth Mead are out for the foreseeable future with torn ACLs, and Arsenal have been unable to find the back of the net in their absence. The Gunners are winless in their last three FA WSL games, pushing them down to 4th in the table, and were knocked out of the FA Cup by Chelsea last weekend. They’re currently preparing for a rematch with the Blues in the League Cup final, where they’re considered underdogs. It feels like everything’s going wrong, and that’s before they face off against a star-studded Bayern Munich in the Champions League.

If the 2-1 loss to Manchester City in league play was Arsenal getting knocked down, this weekend’s 2-0 loss to Chelsea in the FA Cup was them getting kicked in the teeth as they tried to stand up. Arsenal were the better performing team in many ways, outshooting Chelsea 20-7. They had 1.56 Expected Goals to Chelsea’s 0.99, according to WyScout’s xG model.

“It is not normal or ordinary to have so many more goal scoring opportunities than Chelsea at Kingsmeadow,” Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall told reporters after the game, in response to a question by Tim Stillman of Arseblog. “I don’t expect us to come here and create more than we did, we created enough in order to win the game. But they are brutally efficient, hats off to them, we are not.”

Chelsea only needed 7 shots to score 2 goals because they were gifted big chances. As Arsenal men legend Ian Wright put it:

And I don’t think you need to be an expert in football tactics to see his point when watching Chelsea’s two goals. On the opener, Katie McCabe and Kim Little — two very intelligent and hard-working players — simply let Sophie Ingle walk up the pitch to the edge of the box, completely uncontested.

The second comes from a bad turnover, and holy cow, look at how much space is given to through ball machine Jelena Čanković and goal-scorer Samantha Fucking Kerr.

Listen, I know it’s easy for a pleb like me who never made it past rec ball to say “you should simply mark the striker with elite off the ball movement and pace,” but this is sub-professional standard.

I shouldn’t be freaking out about the prospects of a team that’s 6 points off first place with a game in hand. Their +15 goal differential is better than Manchester City’s, and they’re one fortunate week away from topping the table. Arsenal also won its Champions League group, finishing ahead of Lyon and Juventus. I also shouldn’t be overreacting to a loss where Arsenal had more xG and limited their opponents to 7 shots. But there’s been a massive groundswell of negativity coming from big Arsenal voices and fan communities over the last couple weeks, leading us to this place where it feels like the positive xG difference needs to turn into wins immediately or it’s all going to fall apart.

Thankfully, Arsenal have exactly the opportunity they need to cause The Vibes to do an immediate 180. Often times in the top European leagues, big teams will go a month or more without playing a meaningful game, coasting to 4 or 5 victories in a row while everyone’s waiting to see whether or not they’re capable of improving their performances against the teams on their level, that they’re actually in competition with. Arsenal has the chance to put things right just one week later, with a rematch against Chelsea in the League Cup final.

“When I see our performances against Chelsea, we are getting closer to them,” Eidevall said following this weekend’s match. “The games I saw when I prepared before I came, Chelsea were very dominant in some of those games and were very effective in the way they pressed Arsenal high. Arsenal could not impose their possession style on them. I think we see today an Arsenal side that moves the ball well and plays well out of pressure. But i am always the optimist so I am always trying to see the things we are doing better and I can see that development. I am sitting here with that feeling but we need to keep on working hard to give Chelsea an even harder match in the future.”

That future comes up immediately. If Eidevall is right, and a repeat performance against Chelsea nets a better result this time around, it could provide the confidence boost his team needs to mount a serious challenge for the two bigger trophies Arsenal are still competing for. But if Arsenal get the same result on Sunday, it really feels like things will turn sour, even if there’s no data to support that conclusion.