Analysis: Chloe Kelly central to Arsenal clipping the Eagles’ wings

We spoke to Chloe Kelly after Sunday’s 4-0 win over Crystal Palace. While she created two goals with ‘traditional’ wing play, what caught my eye was how often she was moving in-field and playing more like a left 10 at times. I asked Kelly about it post-game.

‘The way Renee sees the team play and the wingers play is sometimes inverted wingers and it’s quite new to me, but something where I feel like I can add to the team. I think for me, I just want to be at my best every day for the team and Renée gives me confidence in those areas. Sometimes you make mistakes in those areas but it is about the reaction as soon as you lose it.’

We also asked Renee Slegers about Kelly’s role after the game. ‘I think in general we play with some more fluidity and freedom, which means we try to we have certain spaces and certain things we want to set up and we can enter from different directions or with different passes and I think that’s hard for our opposition. It can come from all directions and they all the time need to make decisions and need to scan. That’s been good and Chloe is a very strong physical player, I think one V one and crossing player and that’s what she brings to us now.’

Let’s have a closer look at Kelly’s performance and the spaces she took up. On Wednesday evening, she was arguably the star of the show against Madrid playing as a very traditional right winger and assisting two goals from pinpoint crosses. In this game, she started on the left with Mead on the right and she came off the touchline and played more like a left 10.

As Arsenal forge their first attack down the right side, look at where Kelly is standing. It’s not the left wing.

Russo was asked to work the right channel. As this move develops, Kelly is in a very central position looking to attack a potential cross.

As Mead looks to take the ball from Palace on Arsenal’s right side, look again at where Kelly is standing. This is not a coincidence.

As the ball comes back to Swaby, Kelly is on hand to challenge. Again, this is not where a traditional left winger would be.

And as Palace try to pass their way out of trouble here, Kelly is pressing much more like a second striker or a number 10. You can see that her direction of travel was from the right here too, she was given lots of freedom in the first half.

In possession, the impact of this was that it gave Palace choices to make about who moves to pick Kelly up. Williamson has the ball here and we can see Nighswonger creeping up the pitch from left-back.

Williamson finds Kelly in a very central position and she lays the ball off to Maanum. The impact here is that Palace’s back four are incredibly narrow now and Nighswonger has space to run into.

Unfortunately, the ball has a bit of bounce on it, which prevents Maanum from really whipping a pass into Nighswonger here. Because of the bounce, the ball is high and slow and allows Palace to regroup. But the idea is clear, Kelly’s movement pulled Palace out of shape.

Arsenal force a turnover here and again we can see how central Kelly is positioned. We can also see that Palace right-back Hayley Nolan has been pulled in-field to track her.

Maanum elects to shoot on this occasion but again it looks more like Russo and Kelly are playing as split strikers here.

There is a slight irony, then, that Kelly’s assist for the first goal is actually a very traditional piece of wing play. It happens because the move evolves from defending a Palace throw-in, when Kelly definitely needs to be back in position. She wins a duel here with a clever flick on the touchline.

Even as the move evolves, Maanum slightly overhits her pass to Kelly which is why she ends up so wide. The intention was to feed her the ball in the half space.

It’s difficult to accentuate in still images but Kelly is a smart dribbler because she waits for the defender to get right to her and then toes the ball beyond the defender at the point that she can no longer change direction quickly.

That just gives her half a yard on Swaby but this is an incredible cross on her weak side with her weight shifted so much.

It’s a picked out cross too, she doesn’t just lift it into the danger zone, she picks Mead’s run to the edge of the area. It’s world class wing play on a day when Kelly was actually asked to do that a little less.

Nighswonger and Kelly had some really nice rotations on the day too, here we see Nighswonger receive the ball and Kelly again playing inside, like a 10.

Kelly and Nighswonger trade passes here.

Nolan has to go out to track Nighswonger and that leaves space for Kelly to run into. Palace just didn’t know how to cope with Kelly’s movement or who to assign to her.

Same pattern emerges here, the ball comes to Nighswonger, Nolan comes out to close and look who has drifted in behind.

Once again, Kelly is playing very centrally here and Mariona finds her. Palace don’t know who should be picking Kelly up.

It means Kelly has space to turn and drive and her shot goes just wide.

Palace have a throw-in here and Kelly is in the right central half space.

Kelly pinches the ball from Swaby and has a good chance here, which Yanez is out smartly to smother. But once again, she is causing havoc because, much like the Labour party, she is abandoning the left wing.

Kelly gets a shot on target from this position too towards the end of the half which, at the risk of labouring the point, is hardly from the left flank.

The more Palace became aware of Kelly’s movements, the more opportunities it gave Nighswonger to find space too. Once again, Kelly is positioned slightly inside here.

And Nighswonger has time and space to send a fizzing cross into the box from here.

Kelly played a much more orthodox winger role in the second half as Palace started to congest the left half space more. With Arsenal in control they also probably didn’t need Kelly to cover quite as much ground. But the attention on her allowed Nighswonger to make incisive runs. Kelly collects the ball on the left touchline here.

Nighswonger runs from deep on the underlap, Kelly finds her and Jenna again fizzes a dangerous low cross into the area.

The third goal is once again about Kelly’s explosiveness in one-on-one situations. Mariona finds her and we see Kelly’s matador move again. She wants Riley to commit. (Nolan has been subbed at this point and teams don’t usually sub their full-backs unless they have been getting a particularly hard time).

Chloe waits until the exact second that Nolan is committed and cannot shift her body weight quickly before toeing the ball ahead of her and powering past. Her low cross is deflected into her own net by Swaby. It’s the third consecutive WSL game where Arsenal have forced an own goal and they have all been pretty much identical, with low crosses from near the by-line.

On the day, Kelly was asked to move in-field and play like a number 10 and her positioning caused Palace so many issues. But her ability in traditional one-on-one winger v full-back situations saw her create two of Arsenal’s goals.

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