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Hello and welcome to the Arsenal Women's Askcast, the first Arsenal Women's Askcast of 2022.

And I'm aware that I quite often say with these episodes that this is a special one. And to be honest, they are all quite special, so I'm okay with that.

But I think this one's quite a special one. It's been quite a week, hasn't it, with the defeat at Birmingham last Sunday, which, you know, I don't want to dwell on it too much because most of this podcast is quite upbeat and refers to good news in the main.

But I think that Birmingham game might have been the worst I've ever seen Arsenal Women play in a few decades of watching them, I'm racking my brains for a worse performance.

So obviously we had that and that was quite unexpected. I think however, the week has brightened up with two really significant pieces of news, the first that dropped on Wednesday that Leah Williamson has signed a new contract with the club, which is just absolutely fantastic news.

I'm sure everyone will agree.

And I think the thing about Leah signing a contract as well. I said on Twitter that I found this to be the most important, maybe contract renewal that Arsenal have to do at the moment.

Now everyone knows that Vivian Medimer is a world-class player and is in the conversation for the best player in the world.

So nobody needs to really explain how important that Viv is to Arsenal with her contract expiring at the end of the season. And I think our understanding of that is that that's all still undecided. She hasn't decided yet whether she'll extend with Arsenal or go elsewhere.

I think the thing is with that, there are more goal scorers in women's football at the moment in elite women's football than there are world-class defenders. That's the way I look at it.

And I think Leah as a defender would actually be harder to replace than Viv, which again is not to downplay Viv's level of talent at all.

I just think that there are potential for goals on the market, but there just aren't as many defenders.

And look, we've seen how results have been since Leah Williamson came out of the team with injury.

I think there's that aspect of it, the footballing aspect, but also I think for the club's image, I guess, for one of a better word.

It was quite concerning that Leah last season was umming and arring about whether to extend her contract and when she did she only extended for 12 months because she wanted some assurances about standards being raised behind the scenes.

And so there was that big question mark and I think from Arsenal's point of view, if they if they lost 25 year old Leah Williamson, you know a player who's grown up at this club and supports the club and everything else, that would be that would be really concerning if she wasn't convinced by the level of the club's ambition.

The fact that she has signed and that she is at this moment in time convinced by you know the club's project for the next few years is is really really enthusing beyond for beyond reasons of just keeping Leah Williamson.

I think there's a lot to it as well about you know about the club's level of ambition and what they have planned.

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