#other arsenal player i got is miedema and she's injured

[ashleighneville]

Is Bara on the bench because she has/had a minor injury or because vilahamn decided that surprise goalie turned out great for us last time

[redwineconversation]

Lyon's Cheap Ass Screw-Top Pinot Noir (Arsenal - OL Postgame Thoughts)

Am I having fun with the wine puns? Yeah, kind of, not gonna lie.

Condolences to Arsenal, obviously you never want to see a player get injured, but I do want to point out that Lyon has shown a hell of more grace and humility towards Miedema getting injured than Arsenal fans ever accorded Carpenter.

Anyway, moving on, what did we learn from this match? Not a whole lot that we didn't already know, actually. But let's talk about this anyway because the other option is me having to finish the 85 million translations sitting in my drafts.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I do think Cascarino is criminally underrated, and I often wonder if she would be higher up in name recognition if she didn't hate social media so much and wasn't on a team who shares that same aversion. But to know Cascarino means to take the time to watch a team play rather than rely on social media content.

She's a really interesting player to watch. She is very, very talented and her flaw is almost that she is self-conscious about her talent. Cascarino tends to overthink too much: she wants to have the perfect control to play the perfect pass with the perfect touch to score the perfect goal. Perfectionism is fine, but sometimes it's just about shooting at goal and hoping for the best.

It's hard to argue she is a "big game player" but to argue the contrary is somehow inaccurate. She shows up a majority of the game for UWCL games, because it's there that she finds herself to be the most comfortable. Cascarino is a player who struggles against teams who park the bus - actually I think Lyon in general struggles in that situation - because it slows the pace down dramatically. She needs to be able to play quickly. Related, I do think that's why Carpenter and Cascarino work so well together, because they have similar bursts of speech and the one-two passes are more fluid.

Anyway, Arsenal played a great game against Lyon back in October, but a large part of that was because they could stroll up and down the right side with nay a care in the world. Last night Cascarino gave them quite a bit to think about, and we saw the difference that makes.

Cascarino is also notably a non-confrontational player, so her being unintentionally dragged into the van de Donk - McCabe spat did make me laugh a little.

Let's talk about McCabe: I frequently wonder what would have become of her if she was on a team with a stricter sense of structure and discipline. She's talented but reckless at the best of times, what would become of her on a team capable of curbing that? Guess we'll never know, but that doesn't stop us from wondering.

I thought Lyon's defense held up pretty well. Endler's save at the end felt like Endler was being, well, Endler again, and I think that's been missing the past few months. She's been having an off year but seems to be getting back to her previous level. I wish it had happened sooner but better late than never I guess.

Malard being subbed off in the 55th minute instead of playing the full 90 minutes for once felt like a fever dream. Still can't believe Bompastor saw reason even if it was probably only for one game.

I think van de Donk's substitution was due to a couple of factors: I don't think she was in the right head space following Miedema's injury and Lyon wasn't willing to gamble with that in a high stakes game (cf how Lyon reacted when Damaris got injured against Juventus). Second, putting Henry on allowed Lyon to be a bit stronger physically in transition.

Lyon won and it wasn't pretty - in fact it was up there for the ugliest win of the season. I hope this will just be an anecdotal win, lost eventually in the footnotes of Lyon's history.

The reason I say this is simply Lyon struggles a lot more against Juventus than they do against Arsenal. Every team has a thorn in their side, Lyon can't seem to get away from Juventus. The win last year in the Champions League was aided by Lyon's sheer hatred of losing and their desire for revenge. Hegerberg dragged Lyon over the finish line by the scruff of their neck.

But she won't be there on Wednesday, and Lyon doesn't really have an alternative. Yes, they will make it through with a draw. But Juventus knows they will make it through with a win, and will have seen enough Lyon games on tape to know how easy it is to put Lyon on the back foot if you press them hard enough. It doesn't take a lot for Lyon to doubt themselves these days.

So, yeah. We saw flickers of the old Lyon against Arsenal. But I maintain that what we saw wasn't enough to beat Juventus. We'll see if I am right on Wednesday night.