Beth Mead at the double as Arsenal thrash Liverpool in WSL

Two goals from Beth Mead helped take Arsenal to the top of the Women’s Super League table, where they now lead Manchester City by a point with a game in hand.

City have only three games left to play so, if Arsenal can take maximum points from their next three games – against Birmingham, Everton and Brighton – they could already have ended their seven-year wait for a title by the time their Manchester rivals turn up for a supposed showdown on the last day of the season.

“Every game is a final now,” the Arsenal manager, Joe Montemurro, said. “Our patience paid off and the momentum is starting to take shape. We just need to keep focusing on the next job and make sure we hammer home the details.”

The new league leaders were clearly the superior team on Merseyside, constantly forcing Liverpool back into their own half and not allowing Rinsola Babajide any time on the ball or space to run into, though there was some confusion about their second goal, Mead’s first.

The England winger stuck the ball into the net neatly enough after meeting Vivianne Miedema’s cross at the far post, but the goal post was so close and the angle so improbable that the referee, Helen Conley, assumed the shot had hit the side-netting and signalled a goal-kick.

It was only when Mead protested that the ball was in fact in the back of the net and the Liverpool goalkeeper indicated she had been beaten that the goal was awarded, and even then the referee made sure to check the netting was properly attached to the goal frame before restarting the game.

Arsenal had beaten Liverpool 5-0 at home in the opening game of the season and were always in control here – the only real surprise was that it took 20 minutes for their pressure to produce a goal.

When it arrived the visitors’ key attackers were all involved, with Miedema spreading the ball out to Katie McCabe on the left for a low cross that the captain, Kim Little, turned past Anke Preuss from the six-yard line.

Liverpool attempted to hit back before the interval but Babajide was too isolated a presence up front and the Arsenal goalkeeper, Pauline Peyraud-Magnin, quick to leave her line to snuff out any threat from the home side. Just before half-time a searching pass from Courtney Sweetman-Kirk almost sent Kirsty Linnett through on goal, before the impressive Louise Quinn came across to make a timely defensive interception.

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Mead was close to a second goal after an hour when her shot from the right of the penalty area flew narrowly past a post, following a passing move in which the ball was transferred briskly and neatly from one side of the pitch to the other.

She did not have to wait long, just another five minutes in fact, for a clean strike from a similar position that produced the goal of the afternoon, even if a cross had been what Mead originally intended. An inspired pass from Miedema set her free down the right and, with the Liverpool back line preparing to defend a cross, the ball arrowed into Preuss’s top-right corner instead.

Liverpool’s hard work began to unravel after that, with Dominique Bloodworth creating a fourth goal with a stooping header from Katrine Veje’s cross. The defender Sophie Bradley-Auckland may have got the last touch but it was not a significant one. Officially it may go down as an own goal, although Bloodworth’s close-range header was on target.

Sweetman-Kirk pulled a goal back from the penalty spot, after Veje was adjudged to have brought down Yana Daniels in the area, but Arsenal were not to be denied another five-goal haul. Preuss completed an afternoon she will want to forget by getting into a tangle with her own defenders on the edge of the penalty area, allowing Arsenal’s leading scorer, Miedema, coolly to retain possession and slip the ball into an unguarded net.

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