There was no better way to end our final Barclays Women’s Super League home game of the season than with a 93rd-minute Stina Blackstenius winner.
That’s what happened in Wednesday night’s 1-0 victory over Everton at Emirates Stadium, as we climbed above Chelsea into second in the division.
Reflecting on the match, Renée Slegers said: “So happy to get the win and the fans had to wait long for the goal and what I’m happy with is it’s hard of course where the turnarounds are very short and it’s end of the season and you’ve gone through so much as a team and still fighting for second place.
“Of course, the emotions of the players that are going to leave us as well, so if you look at it all together, we wanted a goal earlier but I’m so happy that the team showed the mental resilience and I think two out of five game changers have direct impact on the goal as well. So yeah, good team performance, 1-0 to Arsenal.”
Read more
Report: Arsenal Women 1-0 Everton
We could certainly have had more goals on the night, as Beth Mead was unlucky to strike the woodwork twice, and Olivia Smith was also denied yet another Goal of the Season contender by the crossbar.
“So we were unlucky in those moments because I think if you get a goal earlier, the game can settle in a different way and it also sometimes opens up spaces because the opponent wants something,” Renée added. “So yeah, like I said, I’m really happy with the mental strength and resilience for us to score that goal, keep on believing and score the goal with the help of the fans because they got it going as well and they made sure that we kept on believing and drove us forward and yeah, just happy that we scored the late goal.”
Our head coach had the opportunity to speak to supporters directly after the game, after we’d all given a big send off to the players who will be leaving us this summer.
“The players so much deserve this moment,” she said. “They’ve impacted the club, the people, the football and just to see the connection, I think that’s what makes football so special, that there’s something more, makes it more meaningful but yeah, really nice to see the moment that all these players got.”
We informed Renée that we’ve sold out our away allocation for Saturday’s trip to Anfield, where we take on Liverpool in the final game of the season this weekend.
“Sold out, that’s fantastic,” she responded. “Yeah, no, we look forward to the game, late night now and some good moments but we have to recover now and then we’ll travel to Liverpool on Friday and then we go again.”
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
