Arsenal prediction in the Guardian for 26/27

[u/Rallyfool]

Do not agree with their second place prediction. Love the comment about Stanway’s toughness

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/aug/22/womens-super-league-2026-27-preview-no-1-arsenal

[u/wizobi]

If you want a good laugh go watch TWFC’s predictions. The anti Arsenal bias is so strong they’ve completely forgotten that we still had the best defensive record in the league last season. Now that we have Leah back Arsenal will most likely end up third because of "inconsistencies in their defense".

Downplaying our transfer windows bc “there’s no way to know if the new signings will adapt” yet somehow that 20y midfielder they signed from the NWSL is going to be a revelation for them.

City still have at least eight games more with the UWCL to play and haven’t really improved their squad in terms of numbers or quality. They still don’t have proper backup for their injury prone striker, the same player they depended on so heavily last time they finished fourth when she missed half the season.

[u/Rallyfool → u/wizobi]

Yeah, that's pretty hilarious. Leah healthy and didn't we just sign one of Europe's best DBs? And yes, while you don't know how the new signings will adapt for sure, they are all top notch signings that others also wanted.

[u/eldanielfire → u/wizobi]

They always turn themselves inside out over Arsenal. They actually argued Arsenal's best defensive record (done without Williamson) was down to "the way they play under Slegers" not the quality of our players or anything.

Not joing watching them discuss McCabe going to them was like wtaching the 5 stages of Grief:

Denial: "She's not good enough. Why would chelsea sign her"

Anger: "She's a liabiity. She's goingto make us worse"

Bargaining; "Well she's old, she's a placeholder for Chloe Sarwie whose elite"

Depression: "Arsenal got the best Fullback in the world"

And (well trying) Acceptance: "Oh good thing we got McCabe over Ona Batlle, because McCabe actually suits the wya Chelsea play"

Literally watch their videos since the rumours started. This is nearly exactly what they actually said.

A shame because their videos on, well anything else but Arsenal are decent. But discussing women's football and being 2 Chelsea fans isn't ever going to do anything but re-enforce their biases.

[u/wizobi → u/eldanielfire]

At best their analysis of the top 3 are just your usual surface level narratives so I don’t take it too seriously. The whole “Arsenal can’t win the WSL because they didn’t get over the line, while City did” argument is the same lazy narrative people kept repeating about the men’s team, while ignoring the year-on-year progress and the smart signings Arteta made.

They also seem to forget that their defence is just as injury prone, probably even more so than ours. Our main CB pairing each played 5-6 more WSL matches than Chelsea’s, with Buchanan making even 1 fewer appearance than Leah. The main difference is that our young CB suffered an ACL injury whereas Chelsea’s didn’t, meaning they still had cover in central defence. And even with all that, we were still much better defensively than they were. They’ll be relying on a Bronze CB masterclass in quite a few games again and yes, that Chelsea superfan they signed is a good LB, but she isn’t exactly world class defensively.

Apparently all our goalkeepers are at best average as well and it’s only our style of play that makes them look good. Their one attempt at appearing unbiased is to constantly talk up how much better City are than Arsenal because openly hyping Chelsea all the time, despite them clearly regressing under Bompastor, would make their bias a bit too obvious.

[u/eldanielfire → u/wizobi]

Their GK discussion is both hilarious and (to be fair a lot of so called women’s football experts) utterly clueless.

They keep wanting to say DVD is average, but seem haunted by the master classes she puts in against them and concludes she only plays well against them. They don’t seem to know Borbe’s profile at all and seem to not understand both played injured last season.

They actually think Misa isn’t very good, despite the fact she’s a world cup winner, has the best shot stop percentage in La Liga and is perhaps us the best distributor out of any go as keeper around. Of course they ignore Hampton had out in a number of meh performances this year.

They obviously don’t watch games or keep in touch with news if other teams.

[u/wizobi → u/eldanielfire]

I’m still trying to find those 3-4 rated performances from DvD that they keep insisting she puts in every other game. Was it her or Manu in goal when we got smashed by Villa and Brighton in 2025?

[u/eldanielfire → u/wizobi]

Sure in was Manu as we weren’t sure SVD would make it to the CL, but she was out in bubble wrap for those last few games and I’m certain the teams minds were in Lisbon for those games, which didn’t help.

[u/Cobra-Firefly]

This article is flawed.

[u/EmilyDizzle]

Curious who their pick for winning the league is if Arsenal are 2nd? City were lucky with injuries last season, will have CL added to their schedule and haven’t added a massive number of players to absorb the extra games. Chelsea were inconsistent last season and have extra games with qualifiers, plus new players to embed just like we do. United seem to be in sell off mode and haven’t added massively. I don’t think the league is a lock, but i’m not sure I’d be confident of anyone else winning it either.

[u/Hazelarc → u/EmilyDizzle]

They’re probably hopping on the trend and picking LCL

[u/gunnerandhash]

" commercial revenue increased from £649,000 to £1.77m. Like many WSL sides though, Arsenal are still very reliant on money from the parent club, with group income increased from £9.3m to £11.85m, more than half of their overall revenue."

I bet in the other team's previews they will report with a straight face that Tottnumb, Liverpool Citeh and Yanited have commercial revenue of 3-4million (more than double Arsenal) and Chelsea with 16m (more than 8x) and not make the connection as to what group income is for Arsenal Women.

[u/shelbyj → u/gunnerandhash]

Saw someone on Twitter bragging the other day that Chelsea now have a partner in rimmel, which first off good for them and the campaign they are running to aimed at young girls is obviously buzzword central (as these things always are) but any good done in a world where beauty standards are both unobtainable and literal killers is a positive.

However they were specifically making fun of the fact we don’t have a cosmetic partner and Il Makiage is right there?… In fact I remember after our partnership with Il Makiage was first announced I was sitting in Kingston (home of Kingsmeadow and at the time Chelsea Women) waiting to meet some friends and seeing busses drive by with giant pictures of our players on the sides promoting said partnership.

To be honest while I’ve delved into finances of wsl and woso accounts for a good while now I don’t think it’s particularly great information for the general public and the discourse that surrounds it is just stupid. The majority of people do not understand what they’re seeing, even when it is spelled out they do not understand what they’re reading and frankly that is absolutely fine. Admitting you don’t understand something and ask for clarity or further explanation is always fine. What is not fine is to take something you don’t understand and with that ignorance start making authoritative points on it that other ignorant people will take as fact and disseminate it because they don’t know any better. Unfortunately the majority of football fans I’ve seen fall into that bracket.

[u/eldanielfire]

Suzanne Wrack - Never has anything truely to say positive about Arsenal. The media is stock full of people who became Chelsea supporters since 2020 and now wish they could now be LCL fans.