Arsenal Women Arsecast Episode 166: Thriller at the Villa
Arseblog Arsecast, The Arsenal Podcast
arseblog.com
4.8 • 6.9K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2026
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of the Arsenal Women Arsecast, Tim and Jamie look back at Saturday's 3-0 away win at Aston Villa. Tim and Jamie begin the podcast with the news of the departures of Codina and Pelova and they consider the legacy of Beth Mead. Then there is talk about the win at Villa, including the performance of Smilla Holmberg on the right, Russo going to another level this season and Renee Slegers' post-match explanation that she decided to loosen tactical instruction for this game and allow the players to express themselves. In part two, there are listener questions on how to replace a player like Mead, the apparent U-turn on McCabe's contract and on how much bigger the squad needs to be next season.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Arsenal Women, |
| 0:15.2 | Ostcast and Osblog.com with me, your host, Tim Stillman, looking back at Saturday's |
| 0:19.5 | 3-0 win at Villa Park in the |
| 0:22.6 | sunshine, full away end, lovely, lovely stuff, lovely relaxed game, big contrast to Sunday |
| 0:31.6 | when I was at the London Stadium for the men's game, which was decidedly more tense, |
| 0:36.9 | and to be honest, had higher stakes as |
| 0:40.3 | well. So it feels a bit strange, actually, having already done a podcast about that game, |
| 0:46.2 | to now switch back into the mode of talking about Saturday's game. But that's what we're going |
| 0:51.0 | to do. And obviously, we'll talk about some of the news and the |
| 0:54.8 | announcements of player departures besides. And to do that, as ever, is our co-host Jamie Spanger. |
| 1:01.1 | Jamie, how are you doing? Hi, Tim. It's an emotional morning or evening for you. A lot of big news |
| 1:07.5 | coming out of today. It kind of, the performance was really good on the weekend and that was a positive, but obviously we know it's dragging on to the end of the |
| 1:14.9 | season, Manchester City won the league. So it felt like, it feels like a bit of a weird period, |
| 1:20.0 | but Tim, I'm emotional personally, and I'm sure we'll certainly get onto that. Yeah, yeah, |
| 1:25.2 | definitely. So I was, I was certainly expecting, and if you look across the |
| 1:29.5 | WSL, all clubs do this, right? So, you know, they'll announce their departures ahead of their |
| 1:35.8 | last home game. Villa did it as well, so they did like a little goodbye on the pitch to Sabrina |
| 1:40.0 | DiAngelo, Gabby Nunes, and Lucy Staniforth, who's retiring. |
| 1:46.0 | Lucy played against Arsenal in the 2009 FAA Cup final with Sunderland and her teammates |
| 1:52.6 | that day. Lucy Bronze, Jordan Knob, Steph Horton, all started beside her. |
| 1:57.3 | It's a bit of a reminder into Sunderland's kind of heritage, but yeah, I was expecting |
| 2:03.2 | some departure announcements ahead of the final home game on Wednesday. I have to be honest, |
... |
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