Arsenal will hope to use the momentum of their Conti Cup win over Chelsea on Sunday to kickstart their WSL campaign and start closing the gap to the top three.
The visit of Liverpool was originally supposed to take place at the weekend, with results then seeing Manchester City leapfrog Chelsea into second and go six points clear of the Gunners. Leaders Manchester United also opened up a nine-point gap on Jonas Eidevall’s team, although both Manchester clubs have played two games more.
Despite going all the way in the Conti Cup and beating both City and Chelsea en-route to lifting the trophy, Arsenal are yet to win a WSL game so far in 2023. Concerningly, they have only scored twice in the league since losing Vivianne Miedema to an ACL injury in December. But putting three goals past Chelsea on Sunday without the Dutch star, or indeed Beth Mead, was welcome relief.
For Liverpool, it has been a mixed first season back in the top flight. A home defeat to bottomg club Leicester in their last league game was of huge disappointment, but a 6-0 thrashing by Manchester United remains their only other defeat since breaking a five-game losing streak in November.
Arsenal won 2-0 thanks to goals from midfielder Frida Maanum and Lia Walti when these two sides met on Merseyside in the reverse fixture back in October.
When is kick off? Wednesday 8 March, 19:15 (GMT)
Where is the match being played? Meadow Park
TV channel/live stream? FA Player (UK & international)
Referee? Emily Heaslip
Lina Hurtig was back in the squad for the Conti Cup final, although a start may be unlikley here. Laura Wienroither could replace Noelle Maritze at right-back, with January signing Victoria Pelova also pushing for a start with a busy month ahead for the Gunners.
The absences of Vivianne Miedema and Beth Mead will be felt for the rest of the season.
Long-term absentee Leanne Kiernan remains at least another 10 weeks from a return after experiencing setbacks in her recovery from an ankle injury.
Matt Beard spoke of other ‘challenges’ surrounding injuries to several players and confirmed five, potentially seven, are ruled out. He didn’t name names this time but Natasha Dowie and Niamh Fahey are among them.
After being knocked out of the FA Cup in January, seeing club football pause for the February international break and waiting a few extra days to play this game, Liverpool haven’t been in action in nearly a month. To address that, an in-house game was held on Saturday to keep players ticking over.
Arsenal have the momentum and match practice going into this game that should make the difference. Liverpool have been frustrated by the stop-start nature of their schedule in recent months, which has made any kind of consistency extremely difficult to come by.
Even with their two best forward missing, Arsenal should win relatively comfortably, and any victory here will see them cut the gap to the WSL‘s top three to a minimum of three points with a game in hand on both Manchester City and Manchester United.