2 days Ago
The full-time whistle blew and Ebony Salmon roared. The Aston Villa winger deserved the show of release. Her display in Villa’s 2-1 Women’s Super League (WSL) win against Liverpool was sharp and blistering when needed.
And Villa needed it. It was Salmon’s shot in the 89th minute that ricocheted off Liverpool defender Jenna Clark and trickled beyond goalkeeper Rachel Laws, ending a dismal run of six successive league defeats and presenting head coach Natalia Arroyo with the first points of her tenure since joining in January. Advertisement The last two sides to suffer that many consecutive defeats in the same season were Bristol City in May 2024 (nine) and Reading in May 2023 (six).
Both were relegated. So Salmon roared and pumped her fist towards the skies. That Villa are even mentioned in the same sentence as relegation scrap, let alone actively trying to escape one, would have been an unfathomable prediction at the start of this season.
Spearheaded by ex-England striker Rachel Daly, this team ranked seventh in the world for overall transfer spend in 2024, above Manchester United and Manchester City. They finished the 2022-23 season in fifth and last season in seventh. A MASSIVE THREE POINTS 😍 pic.
twitter.com/zjHmtvDuAQ — Aston Villa Women (@AVWFCOfficial) March 30, 2025 Yet this has been Villa’s existence for much of the season, a state of incredulous firefighting for a team that should, on paper, be fighting in the top end of the WSL. Arroyo was appointed in January after Robert de Pauw’s sacking, the Dutchman leaving Villa hovering one point above the relegation spot after nine matches in charge.
Six games into Arroyo’s tenure, the existence had not changed and the Spaniard admitted last weekend after Villa’s 4-0 defeat to Manchester United that she and the team feared what might happen if results did not go their way. And as Liverpool opened the scoring in the second half, Marie Hobinger stepping up to convert her penalty, that fear seemed to be debilitating. It was a goal that, as far as miniatures for seasons go, was cruelly polished.
Noelle Maritz thumping a terrible pass towards Missy Bo Kearns...
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and Liverpool’s Ceri Holland duly pouncing, the midfielder trailed by a tangle of frantic Villa legs attempting, and ultimately failing, to atone for an error that arrived from a Villa corner. “Noelle (Maritz) was saying to me, the first thing when I was trying to hug her and celebrate, that she was sorry,” Arroyo told media at full-time. “She didn’t want to do this pass.
But probably all the season was being a little bit like this. We need to accept that. We need to really be focused in every action, every detail.
We need to fight for it, but I like the reaction. After a mistake, what do you do after that? React, try to solve the problem. That’s the only thing we can control.
Today, we could celebrate.” Advertisement The changing of managers in quick succession and the threat of relegation have made embedding a philosophy laborious. Equally, signing bright talent is not equivalent to assembling it, and Villa’s eight summer signings, including club-record signing Gabi Nunes from Levante, are still struggling to tease out their synergy.
Against Liverpool, the spaces between players were gawky and bulging at times, the connections an unfamiliar cacophony that Liverpool fed on. But the goal Villa conceded tells a larger story. As the rolling expected goals (xG) graph below shows, Villa began to concede more chances towards the end of last season, started the new season poorly, and have since struggled to ignite their attack.
However, generally speaking, things have not been too much worse than last season and Villa have been massively under-performing at both ends of the pitch. The quality of on-target shots they have conceded estimates that the average team would let in around 29.5 goals this season.
Villa have actually conceded 36 (not including own goals), the biggest under-performance in the division. Likewise, they have generated 20.2 xG and scored 18, also the league’s biggest negative difference.
Salmon’s goal was her first since November 2024, when Villa narrowly defeated relegation rivals Crystal Palace 3-2. Villa have toiled to produce in the final third this season, ranking 12th (bottom of the WSL) for big chances created (19), albeit they rank first for big chance conversions (47.4 per cent).
The loss of Kenza Dali, who left for NWSL side San Diego Wave in January, was conspicuous as Villa laboured to carve out clear-cut chances against Liverpool. While Villa were deserved winners for their response to going a goal down, they were also fortunate. Liverpool failed to make more of their chances in the box and had forward Olivia Smith not been sidelined with a slight hip injury, perhaps they might have been punished.
But the fight against Liverpool was encouraging, if not a reminder of the quality this squad possesses. Advertisement “In the last weeks, we have felt like we were fighting, fighting and never getting anything,” Arroyo said. “Today, after their goal, it looks like the same.
But the face that we showed today was great. Of course, the situation is bad. We are trying to build a Villa for the future that has to do with our present.
The pressure will still be there because the job is not done. We still need some more points. “But we need to build on this identity.
We are talking about what kind of pillar we want to be and the pillar that we are building is a pillar that needs to be aggressive, that needs to compete until the last second in the game, to go through the difficult moments of the game.” (Top photo: Jan Kruger/Getty Images).
