While Chelsea have stayed unbeaten at the start of 2025-26 campaign and sit top of the WSL table, Arsenal have been less fortunate.<\/p>\n
The Gunners’ hopes of a title charge suffered an early blow with a defeat by Manchester City and draws against Manchester United and Aston Villa.<\/p>\n
Those results have left Arsenal five points behind Chelsea and a defeat on Saturday would surely end their dreams of winning a first league title since 2019.<\/p>\n
While they have endured a shaky start to the season, the Gunners did strengthen in the summer and Slegers has a deeper squad to challenge the reigning champions.<\/p>\n
Arsenal will also take confidence from their triumphant Champions League run last season, when they beat eight-time winners Lyon and favourites Barcelona to lift the one trophy that Chelsea have yet to win.<\/p>\n
Former Gunners defender Jen Beattie says Arsenal have the players to cause Chelsea problems.<\/p>\n
“I do think that they have more than enough quality in their squad to [win], ” she told the Women’s Football Weekly podcast. <\/p>\n
“We’ve seen that over the past sort of 12 months of course – it’s whether they get it tactically right.”<\/p>\n
Slegers will also be well aware that Bompastor’s side have looked far from invincible this season.<\/p>\n
The Blues overcame a slow start to beat Aston Villa and they narrowly edged past Leicester, while they dropped points in a surprise draw against Dutch side Twente in their Women’s Champions League opener.<\/p>\n
Describing Chelsea’s unbeaten run as “ridiculous”, former England striker Ellen White added: “It is going to be a real challenge for Arsenal and I think it comes at a good time for them. <\/p>\n
“They have to put everything together now and they have to perform and improve and really kickstart their season.”<\/p>\n
But if the Gunners fail to get any points on Saturday, White says the title, which they last won in 2019, will be “out of reach” again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Chelsea have stayed unbeaten at the start of 2025-26 campaign and sit top of the WSL table,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-249705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}