During photoshoot day, Arsenal Ladies did a live broadcast, hosted by Alex Scott and they revealed two friendlies to be played soon.

As we previously announced Arsenal Ladies will play Rosengard on Thursday 9 February. The Swedish team finished runners-up in the Damallsvenskan in 2016 and are through to the UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-finals, where they will play Barcelona.

And then, next Tuesday the Ladies will play current FA WSL champions, Manchester City WFC, in another friendly at a time and location not disclosed.

Those games could be behind closed doors as they have not been advertised. But the Wolfsburg game in Portugal was not really advertised and fans still managed to watch it. So stay tuned to arsenal.com and you never know, they might surprise us and allow fans to watch.

The club obviously promotes the Kelly Smith celebration game and rightly so, but games against Rosengard and Manchester City will be much more interesting to watch. These are proper opposition and will give a good indication of the team’s evolution during this pre-season.

It is really a shame that the team plays four superb pre-seasons game against teams playing in the Champions League with two of them abroad and the other two possibly closed to fans.