Arsenal will open the Barclays WSL season with a sold-out home game at Borehamwood FC on Friday.

They were set to start away at Manchester City last week, but the FA’s bizarre decision to postpone the games, unlike in many other sports, has delayed the start.

From the pre-game press conference , Catley and Foord are back from the friendly played in Australia and did not suffer from any injury problems.

Therefore, we can expect to have the full squad available with 20 players on the teamsheet.

The training pictures showed all the players in action.

Depending on fitness levels after returning from the internationals and training performance, the staring XI should be close to this: Zinsberger; Martiz or Wienroither, Williamson, Rafaelle, McCabe or Catley ; Wälti, Little, Miedema; Mead, Blackstenius, Hurtig or Foord.

Among the other quotes from Jonas Eidevall, we learnt that he wanted an extra singing: “I’m going to be very honest with this one here.

“Ideally, I would have liked one more player, but it’s always like this when you do transfers.

“There are so many reasons why things can’t go through, and our preference then was if we couldn’t find the perfect fit in this window, then we’d rather do it in the next window, but it’s not more than one player.”

We have currently 20 fit players. Teyah Goldie is recovering from her long-term injury and three players are on loan: Anna Patten, Fran Stenson and new signing, Gio Queiroz.

The manager also explained why it was not a busy transfer window this Summer: “Last January, we brought in many players and didn’t release any players because of the Asia Cup at the time. That meant that we carried a very big squad during the spring season, which was a couple of players too large to accommodate for the number of games that we had.”

As we saw in the second half of the season, there was not much rotation once the squad was settled and the best XI was identified.

A lot of good players did not receive game time in the end. So, it was natural to see many leave the club this summer.

The opposition

Brighton Women had a very busy summer window with 10 players leaving the club and five new signings coming in.

They have a small squad of 18 players, including the experienced ex-Arsenal defender Victoria Williams.

We should expect the usual disciplined and well organized performance from a Hope Powell team.

Arsenal will be favourites on the night and should take advantage of the season opener to stamp their authority on the League.