Stanway sinks Arsenal to lift City title hopes
Unbeaten Manchester City knew this was last-chance saloon for their fading title hopes, and they responded by subjecting runaway leaders Arsenal to their first defeat.
A Georgia Stanway double means City are just three points behind the side who have scored 42 times and otherwise looked on track to have the title wrapped up by Christmas. On an afternoon where the gap between the two could have widened to a yawning nine points, City have kept the door open.
“Three points makes it an easier challenge – we’ve given ourselves a fighter’s chance,” said City manager Nick Cushing. “But it doesn’t mean anything. I remember eating my Christmas dinner last year: top of the league, unbeaten, won every game, Continental Cup final, FA Cup semi-final and Champions League quarter-final. By the end of the season, we took nothing.”
It was a measure of just how depleted Arsenal are, in the absence of the likes of Kim Little and captain Jordan Nobbs, that one of their starting strikers, Paige Baileygayle, was born on Nov 12, 2001, four days before the release of the first Harry Potter film in the United Kingdom. Unused substitute Ruby Grant is so young she received her GCSE results in the summer.
Yesterday gave the Women’s Super League’s other nine teams hope that Arsenal are beginning, in Nobbs’s absence, to at least look a little human. It was another teenager, City regular Stanway, who has changed the momentum of the title race. Her first, a poacher’s finish inside the area as she latched onto a bobbling half-chance, marked the third time Arsenal had fallen behind in the league this season.
Arsenal had to wait nearly an hour to happen upon the gliding style of play that had previously outwitted opponents with a ludicrous sense of ease, Danielle van de Donk nutmegging Demi Stokes before Vivianne Miedema made a hash of the finish.
There was a 10-minute spell where they looked likely to muster an equaliser, but their momentum was punctured by Stanway, who zipped through the Arsenal midfield unchallenged to fire into the bottom corner.
City just about edged the opening stages as two unbeaten teams nestled into a finely-poised first half-hour. Arsenal’s relentless shuffling and spinning has always felt one or two steps ahead of City’s, but in Nobbs’s absence, Joe Montemurro’s side have had to pursue a form of combat with a little more guile and City must have felt like they were coming up against their clone.
It was always going to be a halfchance that burst the game open and it came when Stanway, the ball cannoning around the area, spotted the gap and pounced to break the deadlock.
From then, Arsenal’s centre-back pairing, Louise Quinn and Leah Williamson, faced their most testing afternoon of the season against the menace of Stanway and the often-wasteful Parris, but City were stubborn defensively and reduced the visitors to potshots from distance. For Arsenal’s best chance, Steph Houghton kept Beth Mead at bay, but the second ball fell to Katie Mccabe to strike the post.
“I’ll never make excuses [using] the injuries,” said Montemurro. “We couldn’t break them down, and every time we got opportunities to pull the trigger, we didn’t. We lacked that quality in front of goal.”
Manchester City
Arsenal Referee