It\u2019s been a fantastic debut season in the topflight so far for London City Lionesses, a club that was only founded six years ago as an independent breakaway club from Millwall Lionesses.<\/p>\n
After winning the 2024\/25 Women\u2019s Championship, they wasted little time settling into the WSL under Jocelyn Precheur. Despite losing the first two games 4-1 and 5-1 to ourselves and Manchester United respectively, London City went onto win five of their next seven league matches, notably beating Tottenham Hotspur 4-2 in November.<\/p>\n
But, after a disappointing December of defeats to Brighton & Hove Albion and Leicester City, Precheur was replaced by Eder Maestre, who has picked up four points from his first five matches.<\/p>\n
Those results mean that the newly promoted outfit now sit sixth in the table on 19 points, 10 behind Spurs but also 10 ahead of bottom-placed Leicester, making relegation an unlikely prospect.<\/p>\n
Former Gunners Freya Godfrey and Nikita Parris are joint top scorers in the league with three goals each.<\/p>\n
WHAT THE MANAGERS SAY<\/h3>\n\n<\/article>\nSlegers: <\/strong>\u201cOf course we know that we\u2019re going into five London derbies and then Brighton at the end of the block, we\u2019re active in three different competitions, so there\u2019s of course mental demands, like there always will be, but also physical. <\/p>\n“We start with these two games and we know how London City has framed the game, it\u2019s a big one for them, so we\u2019ll have to be prepared. Then it\u2019s West Ham and then we have those four games with a very short turnaround, so freshness is going to be key for us this block.\u201d – Read every word of Ren\u00e9e\u2019s pre-London City Lionesses press conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n Every word of Ren\u00e9e’s pre-London City presser <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nTeachers: <\/strong>\u201cArsenal is one of the most talented teams in the world, so we need to understand that we need to be very focused on the details.<\/p>\n\u201cWith these kinds of players, we need to understand the profiles, the strengths of Russo, the same for Olivia\u2026 they have a lot of players they can use in the frontline.\u201d<\/p>\n
TEAM NEWS<\/h3>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nRen\u00e9e said in her pre-match press conference that there are no fresh injury concerns, and that Beth Mead has been progressing well during the international break.<\/p>\n
Leah Williamson and Chloe Kelly have progressed well with England over the last few weeks after recovering from injuries.<\/p>\n
Steph Catley, Caitlin Foord and Kyra Cooney-Cross are not available due to their ongoing international commitments with Australia at the AFC Women\u2019s Asian Cup.<\/p>\n
FACTS AND STATS<\/h3>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nWe have won each of our last five away games in all competitions, keeping a clean sheet in each of our last four. We last had a longer winning run on the road between April and November 2022 under Jonas Eidevall (8).<\/p>\n
Only Chelsea (9) have scored more goals in the opening 20 minutes of WSL games this season than ourselves (7) and London City Lionesses (6). However, only Aston Villa (8) have conceded more goals than the Lionesses (6), who have the worst xGA figure (6.2), in that same period in 2025\/26.<\/p>\n
We have lost only one of our 12 London derby matches in the WSL under Ren\u00e9e Slegers (W9 D2 L1 \u2013 0-1 vs Chelsea) and average 2.4 points and 2.9 goals per game. In our 20 non-derby league games under the Dutchwoman, we average 2.2 points and 2.5 goals.<\/p>\n
Danielle van de Donk could make her 100th WSL appearance, 96 of which came for us between 2016 and 2021. The only player in WSL history to celebrate reaching a century of appearances by scoring against a \u2018big three\u2019 team (Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City) is Ellen White in February 2020 (for Man City vs Chelsea).<\/p>\n
Alessia Russo has scored against 15 of the 16 teams she has faced in the WSL, with the exception being London City Lionesses. Should the striker net in this match she will be the third player to score against 100% of the teams they have played against in the WSL along with Vivianne Miedema (17\/17) and Sam Kerr (14\/14).<\/p>\n
MATCH OFFICIALS<\/h3>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nKirsty Dowle has been appointed to take charge of Sunday\u2019s match. She has officiated nine WSL matches so far this season, handing out 14 yellow cards and no reds.<\/p>\n
Four of those matches were Arsenal games, including, most recently, our 2-0 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n
Referee: <\/strong>Kirsty Dowle
Assistant Referees: <\/strong>Daniel Sykes and Luke Bowles
Fourth Official: <\/strong>Stacey Pearson<\/p>\nHOW TO WATCH<\/h3>\n\n\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nThe game will be broadcast live on Sky Sports + in the UK. International viewers can find out where to watch the game here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n How to watch London City v Arsenal Women on TV <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\nCopyright 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.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barclays Women\u2019s Super League football returns this weekend following the international break, as we travel to Bromley to take on London City Lionesses at the Copperjax Community Stadium. It\u2019s an … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Slegers: <\/strong>\u201cOf course we know that we\u2019re going into five London derbies and then Brighton at the end of the block, we\u2019re active in three different competitions, so there\u2019s of course mental demands, like there always will be, but also physical. <\/p>\n “We start with these two games and we know how London City has framed the game, it\u2019s a big one for them, so we\u2019ll have to be prepared. Then it\u2019s West Ham and then we have those four games with a very short turnaround, so freshness is going to be key for us this block.\u201d – Read every word of Ren\u00e9e\u2019s pre-London City Lionesses press conference.<\/p>\n \n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n Teachers: <\/strong>\u201cArsenal is one of the most talented teams in the world, so we need to understand that we need to be very focused on the details.<\/p>\n \u201cWith these kinds of players, we need to understand the profiles, the strengths of Russo, the same for Olivia\u2026 they have a lot of players they can use in the frontline.\u201d<\/p>\n Ren\u00e9e said in her pre-match press conference that there are no fresh injury concerns, and that Beth Mead has been progressing well during the international break.<\/p>\n Leah Williamson and Chloe Kelly have progressed well with England over the last few weeks after recovering from injuries.<\/p>\n Steph Catley, Caitlin Foord and Kyra Cooney-Cross are not available due to their ongoing international commitments with Australia at the AFC Women\u2019s Asian Cup.<\/p>\n We have won each of our last five away games in all competitions, keeping a clean sheet in each of our last four. We last had a longer winning run on the road between April and November 2022 under Jonas Eidevall (8).<\/p>\n Only Chelsea (9) have scored more goals in the opening 20 minutes of WSL games this season than ourselves (7) and London City Lionesses (6). However, only Aston Villa (8) have conceded more goals than the Lionesses (6), who have the worst xGA figure (6.2), in that same period in 2025\/26.<\/p>\n We have lost only one of our 12 London derby matches in the WSL under Ren\u00e9e Slegers (W9 D2 L1 \u2013 0-1 vs Chelsea) and average 2.4 points and 2.9 goals per game. In our 20 non-derby league games under the Dutchwoman, we average 2.2 points and 2.5 goals.<\/p>\n Danielle van de Donk could make her 100th WSL appearance, 96 of which came for us between 2016 and 2021. The only player in WSL history to celebrate reaching a century of appearances by scoring against a \u2018big three\u2019 team (Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City) is Ellen White in February 2020 (for Man City vs Chelsea).<\/p>\n Alessia Russo has scored against 15 of the 16 teams she has faced in the WSL, with the exception being London City Lionesses. Should the striker net in this match she will be the third player to score against 100% of the teams they have played against in the WSL along with Vivianne Miedema (17\/17) and Sam Kerr (14\/14).<\/p>\n Kirsty Dowle has been appointed to take charge of Sunday\u2019s match. She has officiated nine WSL matches so far this season, handing out 14 yellow cards and no reds.<\/p>\n Four of those matches were Arsenal games, including, most recently, our 2-0 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n Referee: <\/strong>Kirsty Dowle The game will be broadcast live on Sky Sports + in the UK. International viewers can find out where to watch the game here.<\/p>\n \n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barclays Women\u2019s Super League football returns this weekend following the international break, as we travel to Bromley to take on London City Lionesses at the Copperjax Community Stadium. It\u2019s an … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Every word of Ren\u00e9e’s pre-London City presser <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nTEAM NEWS<\/h3>\n
FACTS AND STATS<\/h3>\n
MATCH OFFICIALS<\/h3>\n
Assistant Referees: <\/strong>Daniel Sykes and Luke Bowles
Fourth Official: <\/strong>Stacey Pearson<\/p>\nHOW TO WATCH<\/h3>\n
How to watch London City v Arsenal Women on TV <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n