Arsenal’s disappointing start to the Women’s Super League season continued as they could only draw at home to winless Birmingham.<\/p>\n
The Gunners have won just one of their first six league games, picking up six points in the process. They are nine points off the top and six off the Champions League qualification places.<\/p>\n
They were dominant once again at Emirates Stadium but once again struggled to break down an opponent’s low block to fashion clear-cut opportunities.<\/p>\n
It was Birmingham’s star striker Oceane Hurtre who delivered the opener, surging up the pitch on a counter-attack in the second half before dinking the ball over Misa Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
While Birmingham were rarely afforded the chance to build up possession, the visitors posed a constant threat on the break and often looked like they would trouble the hosts.<\/p>\n
It was one of those breaks which put Birmingham ahead as Hurtre, who has already scored six times in the league for Blues this campaign and netted on her debut for France in the international break, took advantage to round off a move as Arsenal parted in the face of Birmingham’s quick counter.<\/p>\n
A moment of magic from Olivia Smith levelled things up for Arsenal as she whipped a wonderful strike into the far corner from distance.<\/p>\n
Aside from Smith’s goal, Alessia Russo also came close but could only strike the far post when she met an expertly whipped Leah Williamson corner with her head inside the box, while Lisa Baum was also unlucky not to score when she had a close-range header saved by Sophie Baggaley.<\/p>\n
The result leaves Arsenal eighth in the WSL – and they could slip further down the standings when the other 12 teams play on Sunday. Birmingham, meanwhile, are 11th.<\/p>\n
Arsenal’s next game is the north London derby next Saturday (12:45 BST), while Birmingham are away to Durham in the Players Cup on Wednesday (19:00).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal’s disappointing start to the Women’s Super League season continued as they could only draw at home to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-805630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805630","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=805630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}