At 12:45 BST on Saturday, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will host a Women’s Super League north London derby that neither club recognises. Tottenham, fourth with 10 points, are above Arsenal in the table for the first time in the fixture’s history. Arsenal, eighth on six points, have gone five matches without a win and are enduring their worst start to a WSL season since 2014. BBC One has the game, and the broadcaster could hardly have picked a better one: two clubs whose seasons have already begun to bend out of shape, meeting at the exact point where the shape is still fixable.
Renée Slegers has won one of six league matches. Martin Ho has conceded 12 goals in his last two. One of them will leave N17 with the first clean result of their autumn — and the other will leave with questions that no longer go away.
Arsenal’s crisis is a finishing crisis
The numbers behind Arsenal’s slump are stranger than the table suggests. Slegers’ side have dominated territory almost everywhere they have played: most passes in the opposition half in the division, most touches in the final third, 54 high turnovers. They have five goals to show for it. Across the opening four matches they converted two of 78 shots, a 2.6% non-penalty conversion rate that is their worst four-game stretch since July 2014. Nine big chances created, one taken.
This is not the collapse of a bad team. Arsenal finished second last season with 52 points, their highest return since the 2018-19 title. But Opta’s model has cut their title probability from 25.6% before a ball was kicked to around 7%, and Slegers has stopped arguing. “At the moment, we’re not in the [title] conversation, no,” she said after the 4-2 defeat at Manchester City, a game Arsenal led twice.
Selection has not helped. Slegers has used 21 players, more than any WSL side, and made nine changes to her starting XI across four matches. Summer signings Selina Cerci and Géraldine Reuteler have barely played; Chloe Kelly has logged 124 minutes. On Saturday she is without Cerci, Mariona Caldentey, Kelly, and the long-term ACL absentees Michelle Agyemang and Katie Reid, with Kim Little doubtful. Emily Fox may return at right-back. Stina Blackstenius is expected to lead the line, with Alessia Russo — a hat-trick scorer in the last north London derby — the obvious source of the goal Arsenal cannot find.
“At the moment, I’m not looking at the table,” Slegers said on Friday. “My mindset is to take it game-by-game. The fight we will bring for the fans tomorrow is the only thing we’re thinking about.” Of the boos that greeted the 1-1 home draw with Birmingham City, she was pointed: “That was the sound of care, and the sound of frustration, which was totally to its right.”
Tottenham found a ceiling, fast
Spurs took 10 points from their first 12, Ho was named WSL Manager of the Month for September, and the conversation around the club turned giddy. Then came a 6-1 home humiliation by London City Lionesses and a 6-2 defeat at Chelsea in which Tottenham were level and competitive for an hour before falling apart.
The summer recruitment explains both halves of that story. Victoria Pelova arrived from Arsenal and has already scored five league goals. Kirsty Hanson came from Aston Villa, Alice Sombath from OL Lyonnes. It is a squad with real quality and very little mileage — five or six starters are under 24, including 20-year-old Toko Koga.
Ho is refusing to flinch. “I don’t think one or two defeats against the top, top teams, with the calibre of players they have and the depth of squads they have, should dent the direction we’re going in,” he said. “We finished fifth, so now they expect us to finish in the top three.” Jess Naz is in contention for her first appearance since an ACL injury in December 2025; Olga Ahtinen misses out with a knock. Phoebe Cross referees.
History is heavily on Arsenal’s side
Whatever the table says, the fixture’s record is lopsided. Arsenal have won 10 of the 13 WSL north London derbies, scoring 37 goals in those wins, and have taken victory from three of their four visits to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Spurs have never beaten Arsenal in the league in front of a crowd this size.
- Arsenal: 8th, six points, one win in six, five goals scored
- Tottenham: 4th, 10 points, 18 goals scored, 14 conceded
- Leaders: Manchester City 18, Chelsea 16, London City Lionesses 15
What Saturday actually decides
Arsenal are already 12 points behind Manchester City. A seventh match without a win would end the title argument in October and shift the entire question to whether Slegers — appointed as Jonas Eidevall’s successor in 2024 and, until this autumn, untouchable — survives to Christmas. A win settles nothing structurally, but it buys the weeks in which the finishing might normalise.
For Tottenham, the stakes are quieter and arguably larger. Beating Arsenal at home, on BBC One, having been battered twice in a fortnight, would be the first evidence that Ho’s young side can absorb a bad run rather than be defined by it. Lose a third in a row and fourth place starts to look like a September illusion. Two clubs, one afternoon, and very little room left to explain things away.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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