The Rotation Game
How are the WSL top four trying to maximise their squads?
This, to my mind, is Jonas’ biggest challenge this season, rotating effectively. In his first season he didn’t rotate because he didn’t have enough trusted players. Last season, he couldn’t rotate due to injuries. [...]
When I look at Emma Hayes’ Chelsea, I think their biggest strength is their ability to rotate plug and play players, but it took them years to get to that point.
By Tim Stillman From Arseblog
One of the key themes that is going to come out of this WSL season is rotation. With the competition at the top fiercer than ever before, the need for teams to find an edge over their opponents is increasingly important. There is a sense that Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United are playing football musical chairs. When the music stops, one of them will miss out on a Champions League spot.
Clearly, as we saw with Arsenal and Manchester United this year, being in the Champions League places does not actually guarantee you make the group stage but finishing in the top three still denotes a level of achievement. United’s incredibly settled squad was a key factor in them finishing second last year. Manager Marc Skinner had ten players who started 19 or more games in the league. Compare that with Chelsea, who only had Sam Kerr reach that milestone.
But what Skinner was able to do was a combination of luck in having those players so consistently available and a reflection of United’s lack of high intensity matches. Arsenal and Jonas Eidevall know all too well how injuries can quickly decimate a settled starting XI, leaving you forced to play whoever is available to you.
However, rotation is not as simple as just bringing in certain players whenever. In any squad there is going to be a gradient of ability or even a mismatch of positional availability.
Part of the reason that Kerr played so much for Chelsea was because they sold Bethany England in January to Tottenham, leaving them without a recognised striker other than Kerr. Regardless, Emma Hayes has made rotation a key pillar of the way her team plays, making Chelsea difficult for opponents to predict and inuring them somewhat to the risks of injuries over the season. This year, Hayes has already used 22 players from a 25 player squad. The only three not used so far have been Aniek Nouwen, Hannah Hampton (the third choice goalkeeper) and Catarina Macario (unavailable as a result of long term injury).
Hayes tends to take a risk when it comes to the rotation. Chelsea traditionally start seasons slow (by the standards of being four time consecutive league winners), often looking below their level for the first couple of months. It tends to pay off with players building up familiarity in that time so that when the end of the season rolls around whoever is available at that point is fully immersed in the system to take Chelsea over the line. In the past three seasons, Chelsea have been on a 7, 13, and 9 game unbeaten run when they won the titles in 2022/23, 2021/22, and 2020/21 as well as winning the FA Cup at the end of 22/23 and 21/22 too.
The desire to rotate more comes from a number of different places. Firstly, competing on all fronts means playing a lot of matches. As the below graph shows, Chelsea have hit the 40 match mark twice in the last three seasons, with Arsenal getting close to it. UWCL involvement heavily impacts that number with Manchester United playing far fewer matches due to not being in the competition for the past three years.
Playing in more matches leads to greater exhaustion and injury risk for players. There are two elements of this with regard to rotation. You can attempt to be preventative or reactive, or realistically, a bit of both. Preventative rotation involves monitoring players physically so that they are rested when your sports scientists think they are at increased risk of injury. Obviously that is not always feasible and not all injuries are predictable meaning that sometimes changes are enforced.
Rotation also matters with regard to squad size. Because teams like Manchester United and Arsenal went into the season with the assumption that they could be playing in the Champions League, they recruited accordingly. The possibility of playing 10+ extra matches in a very competitive setting influences who you want to have available to you. Now without those games, Skinner and Eidevall will be forced to try and keep those players happy.
So how is everyone going about this? At the early stage of the season, it can be hard to tell what is rotation and what might simply be tinkering with a formula that a manager hopes to settle on.
With Chelsea, it seems like a bit of both. When fit, their nailed on starters look to be Millie Bright, Jess Carter, Guro Reiten and Sam Kerr. Fran Kirby and Lauren James are probably also there or thereabouts, whilst Niamh Charles has been a surprising starter in every game so far as has Sophie Ingle. Ingle’s consistent inclusion is probably due to the fact that Chelsea have had midfield injuries already this season. Outside of the five players who have started every match (Bright, Carter, Charles, James and Ingle), twelve more players have already racked up more than 100 minutes.
Manchester United have been the team to really keep an eye on with regard to this given how stringent Skinner was last season. There has already been some rotation in his front three and midfield. Hinata Miyazawa has tried out a couple of different positions whilst it looks like Leah Galton/Melvine Malard and Geyse/Nikita Parris are going to offer some more variation up top. It is probably unsurprising that United have not really gelled in attack yet with Skinner relying heavily on the connections and movement between his players, but it will benefit United to build up those relationships in the long run.
As Tim wrote in his piece, Jonas Eidevall has a new experience at Arsenal with the amount of players he has available to him. It has been a tough start to the season with a lack of real inventiveness in the final third limiting Arsenal’s ability to break down deep blocks. What has been intriguing about what Eidevall has done so far is that lots of the rotation has been about using players in different ways. For example, Kim Little played as the left-sided 10 against Manchester United. This is part of what having players available allows you to do in terms of tailoring game plans to specific opponents but it also can be quite disruptive. It feels like right now Eidevall is figuring out who exactly he wants to play where and with results going the way that they have, the sense has been a ‘win at all costs’ approach. The return of Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema is clearly a massive boost and we will probably get a clearer idea of what 2023/24 Arsenal actually looks like after the international break.
Finally Manchester City who much like United have tended to use a relatively settled XI. Only Aston Villa made fewer substitutes last season than Manchester City with Gareth Taylor obviously reluctant to remove any of his star players from the pitch. There are some hints that Taylor will be more trusting of his options this season with Mary Fowler so far having started every match, and players like Kerstin Casparij, Jess Park and Ruby Mace all making appearances from the bench. However, because City went into this season knowing that they did not have Champions League football, they also have a relatively small and settled squad. Notably their only signing was Jill Roord and of all the top four, they have probably played the best football. If anyone was going to do a United-esque set XI for the year, City look best placed for it.
With only four matches played of the season, it is hard to get a definitive sense of what is rotation and what is tinkering but it does feel like it is a bigger focus for coaches than before. Whether through necessity or ingenuity, the ability for ‘second XIs’ to contribute is crucial across a 30 to 40 game season. Hayes recently revealed that Chelsea play full ninety minute games on Monday’s behind closed doors for those who have not featured over the weekend. It is a delicate balance to manage the personalities and relationship required but making it work can give teams a renewed lease of life across a season.