By Roos Schelen (13/11/25)
Above: Villa boss Natalia Arroyo. Photo: Christopher Thomond / The Guardian.
Natalia Arroyo does not think lightly of Aston Villa’s meeting with newly promoted London City Lionesses this Sunday.
Aston Villa face newly promoted London City Lionesses this Sunday, a team who started the league season with a few losses, which is not highly unthinkable when one considers they had a lot of transfer activity in the summer.
They have since become a more coherent team and now sit sixth in the table, with 12 points from eight matches. The Lionesses sit nine points behind league leader Manchester City and two points ahead of weekend opponents Aston Villa.
Arroyo doesn’t think lightly of the upcoming meeting. “They don’t look as a new team in the league. They are using the experience of players like Asllani, like Kumagai, Sanni Franssi, like Jana Fernandez, Linari, a lot of good players, Geyoro. So, yes, they know how to play the game and they are being able to bring that”, she explained.
The most danger, Arroyo thinks, will come off them having the ball. Kosovare Asllani, the club captain, has the third most shot creating actions in the league and is definitely a player to watch out for.
Arroyo welcomes the extra competition London City Lionesses bring to the WSL. “I always welcome the pressure and I want as many competitors as possible because that forces us to be better and better and better and that’s what we want. And if at the end of the season we are better than them, we will celebrate it and if not we will try to learn from what they are doing better than us”, the head coach expressed.
Natalia Arroyo wants other Women’s Super League (WSL) teams to think of Aston Villa as a monster to fear, she said after Villa’s win against Manchester United last weekend.
Impetus Football asked Arroyo what she means by that. She told us she is looking for Villa to be a team that opponents will think is hard to beat mentally. “It’s about this energy on the opposition so that the other teams are like thinking, oh, there’s not that many gaps or that many spaces where we can hurt them”, Arroyo said.
“We know we are in a good moment but we need to keep working because this is only now and this is good, but this is November so we need to show that consistently every game”, she added.
There will be no players moving from the injury list to the squad list this weekend. Maya Hijikata has been training with the squad this week but will not be fit enough, but there are no new injuries to report either. “The good news of not having the bad news”, she smiled.
Aston Villa v London City Lionesses kicks off at 12 noon UK time on Sunday.
Follow Impetus on social media:
@ImpetusFootball on X, Instagram and TikTok.
impetusfootball.org 