There were good times under the management of Jonas Eidevall. I genuinely ponder how many Arsenal Women’s fans have forgotten this, since the generalised reaction to his departure last October was borderline gleeful, sprinkled with a soupcon of resentment towards him, as if Eidevall had ruined everything on purpose.
“I think that’s exceptional leadership,” Izzy Christensen said last December on Sky Sports. It’s probably not a sentiment many (online) Arsenal fans are interested in hearing, but egocentrism is a common (and necessary?) bedfellow of football managers. It’s rare that one has the clarity to realise they’re no longer the best person for the job. I wonder too if Eidevall resigned not only because the players were no longer responding to him, but because he is also a long-time Arsenal fan. Did that make it easier for him to put the club ahead of himself?
Eidevall, now at the NWSL’s San Diego Wave, recently addressed the end of his time in North London, saying, “It felt like a cloud was hanging over us.” Anyone who witnessed Arsenal’s final few performances under him could hardly dispute that assessment.
In this writer’s view, it was the right decision for Eidevall to resign, yet I took no pleasure in that outcome. His commitment to the job was never in question, there were a couple of trophies, one serious title challenge, an incredible run to the Champions League semi-finals, and he was in charge during a time of huge growth for Arsenal—especially as far as attendances went.
So, ignore anyone who says Eidevall never had the backing of the supporters. I was at the final game of the 2022/23 season, and after he delivered his end-of-season speech, the fans serenaded him with a chant of “Jonas Eidevall’s red and white army!” While warning signs for this season were present, few anticipated things unravelling so rapidly.
But unravel they did. Arsenal’s hierarchy had not planned for this, and they drafted in Renee Slegers to keep a battered car on the road before they could find a replacement driver. In temporary charge, Slegers won a game. Then won another. And another. The only thing denying her a 100% record was a late concession of an equaliser to Manchester United in a game Arsenal played more than well enough to win.
This transcended a summary hot streak or a new manager bounce. It’s something more when you win 11 games out of 12, and top a Champions League group that had Bayern Munich in it. The results appreciably improved, as did the team’s level of performance. Arsenal may have been looking for a new manager, but it turned out they just needed to look at the woman already in the dugout.
With Slegers only making minor adjustments to Eidevall’s preferred style and line-up, the ostensible explanation for the recovery was explained by some as “vibes”. There was just something about Slegers; an aura, a former player who just gets it.
Of course, this is mostly frontier gibberish, but that’s not to say there wasn’t a change in the emotional dynamic of the club. This dynamic was recognisable—it might be something you have personal experience with—but is usually associated in familial settings rather than professional ones. In her temporary position, Slegers became Arsenal’s “fun Aunty”.
We’ve all got one. She might not be a blood relation. She might not be a “she”. But we all have an elder who, since you were a child, you always enjoyed seeing. They’d take you to the cinema, they’d sneak you a little extra spending money, they’d recommend the best music, they might even be the person you’d confide in instead of your parents. Despite their age, they don’t come across as an authority figure, but someone who can connect with you on your own level.
And if Slegers is the fun Aunty, that left Eidevall as the well-meaning, but slightly angst-ridden and dogmatic patriarch, whose presence in the household was starting to make everyone a bit miserable. To be clear, this analogy isn’t to demean anyone’s personal circumstances. Families can be tough, and come in many different forms. Sometimes despite the best will in the world, things don’t work, and a clean break is best for everyone. It doesn’t mean Daddy doesn’t love us anymore. But for our happiness, and his, he did the right thing by leaving.
However, someone still needs to take care of the children. Enter your fun Aunty. The ideal person to guide everyone through this sudden upheaval. Longer term, a more permanent solution is required. But for now, fun Aunty might just be the remedy. She’ll let you stay up a little later than usual, lets you eat junk food every Friday, and finds ingenious ways to help you with your homework.
Suddenly, everyone’s breathing a little easier. There’s a little bit more joy at home. A few more laughs, a little less stress. You only have to look at recent comments from Arsenal players to see how much they enjoy being managed by Slegers. Things have been going so well since fun Aunty moved in. So much so, you think, can’t she stay? Can’t she just move in for good?
So now she no longer has the spare key. She has her own. Slegers is the permanent Arsenal manager. We’ve got what we wanted. Aunty Renee has moved in. And I’m sure things will continue in this same optimistic, upbeat vein, yes?
Well… maybe. The question isn’t whether Slegers is capable of managing Arsenal. But being the interim and permanent Head Coach is not an identical situation. Previously, Slegers’ responsibilities didn’t go beyond the next match. She existed in a space of conscious short-termism, not thinking further than the next opponent.
But the job of a Head Coach involves more than just preparing the team to win the next game. You have to inculcate specific patterns of play (while knowing you will have to make subtle adjustments once teams get wise to you), you have to manage players emotions and egos, you have to think ahead to future transfer windows—which players are part of the club’s future, and which are not?
That last bit is a huge task. Arsenal have a lot of quality and experience. But they have a number of players out of contract in the summer. Slegers is currently making her senior players feel more involved in the process, which is a shrewd move. Five of her squad are, or have been, captains of their respective countries, with Slegers receiving the benefit of their leadership skills. But the group is also collectively slow, short, lacking in melanin, with quite a few close to, or in, their 30s. Pace, height and youth will need to be acquired soon.
Progress had been uninterrupted until Arsenal ran into champions and league leaders Chelsea on Sunday, delivering the first loss of the Slegers era. This shouldn’t engender panic, as Arsenal were always going to lose at some point. But it’s worth pointing out they’re in the middle of a crunch week that ends with consecutive games against Manchester City. They could play well in both and still lose. It remains to be seen how Slegers will handle bad results, what the plan is when key players lose form, or how she responds to injuries.
It should also be noted that Slegers is a young manager. She’s only a year older than her captain, Kim Little. While this isn’t her first head coaching job, the level of competitiveness and media scrutiny found in the Women’s Super League is something Slegers has yet to fully experience. Maintaining oneself under that pressure is as much part of the job as tactical acumen or player management.
Slegers herself has acknowledged that her job now isn’t the same as it was. But she has emphasised that she intends to keep the previous elements of the role: “I won’t change,” she said to the players. But the circumstances around Slegers might.
And we’ve yet to see what she does when a player (or players) aren’t responding positively to her methods, how she handles a bad run of results, or what her plans are to integrate the club’s coterie of teenagers. The things that fans are currently highlighting as apparent proof of her genius can just as easily end up as reasons for potential underachievement.
For the record, I am fully in favour of the appointment. No manager is a guarantee of success (the notion of “winning managers” isn’t really a thing in the women’s game), but she has more than earned the right to get a fair chance with the job. And because of her relatively young age, she could potentially be Arsenal’s manager for much of the next decade.
But now that Aunty has moved in, she can’t be Aunty anymore. She won’t always be able to be fun. Sometimes she’ll have to enact discipline. Every now and then, she’ll have to tell the children “no”. And you can’t hand them off to their parents when you get tired, because now you’re the parent.
If this is going to work long term, Renee Slegers has to transition from Arsenal’s fun Aunty into its mum, or given how tied up with the LGBTQ+ community women’s football is, she has to become “Mother”.
