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Whoever comes out on top over the next two legs between these two will play Chelsea. The Blues have reached the semi-finals in the past three seasons but have never won the trophy.
Arsenal travelled to Leuven in December when the two clubs played one another in the group stage. The Gunners came out 3-0 winners that day, you can recap the action here:
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Here is Arsenal boss Renée Slegers on why Stina Blackstenius and Beth Mead are not involved: “Stina and Beth didn’t travel. Stina still has issues with her calf and Beth needs some time to offload her shin.”
Here is that Leuven team news, the side could not play Veefkind as she is suspended.
Leuven: Seynhaeve, Everaerts, Biesmans, Mertens, Janssen, Pusztai, Hermans, Kujpers, Reynders, Conijnenberg, Bosteels.
Bench: Lammertijn, Rispens, Nagy, Papatheodorou, Van Besauw, De Ceuster, Heremans, Neyrinck, Dekker, Van Holderbeke
The team news is in. Arsenal are without Beth Mead and Stina Blackstenius, more on that shortly, and despite being a few attacking players down Alessia Russo starts from the bench.
Arsenal: Van Domselaar, Fox, Williamson, Codina, McCabe, Pelova, Caldentey, Maanum, Kelly, Foord, Smith
Bench: Votikova, Williams, Wubben-Moy, Catley, Holmberg, Cooney-Cross, Little, Russo.
I am just tracking down the Leuven news, bare with me.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to the Women’s Champions League play-off game between Leuven and Arsenal. This is the first leg of the play-off with the second being hosted by Arsenal next week.
The play-offs are new to the women’s competition this year and it comes after the groups were scrapped in favour of the league. The top four automatically qualified for the quarter-finals, while the other spots will be decided by these play-offs.
Arsenal are the defending champions and so it will be a difficult task for Leuven to come out on top but today’s match is the perfect time to put some light between them and the Gunners. If they come off the losers in this encounter, overturning that in London will be a mountain to climb.
The team news will be up shortly before kick-off at 5.45pm GMT. So stay tuned for all of the updates and some build-up to this game which should be a cracker.
