Sam Kerr pounces late to deny Arsenal and keep Chelsea top of WSL table

A late header from Sam Kerr denied a dominant but toothless Arsenal all three points, in a feisty battle with the Women’s Super League leaders Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium.

The Gunners looked to have closed the three-point gap on their London rivals at the top of the table, with Chelsea having played a game more, thanks to a Kim Little penalty before the hour, but Kerr needed just one moment to draw the beleaguered Blues level.

With 46,811 tickets sold, more than 40,000 had come for the third time to watch the women’s team in the WSL this season, though there were hordes of fans stranded outside as the game kicked off. Arsenal said in a statement that matchday operation was the same as it is for every fixture at the ground, blaming “an early kick-off combined with a number of new supporters to our stadium, coupled with 50% of supporters arriving in the last 20 minutes before kick-off” for the overwhelmed turnstiles.

Jonas Eidevall had said Arsenal could not change the past when it came to their one win in seven league games against Chelsea, but “we can change the future”. He opined that a foundation of togetherness would help create a team that plays “without fear, that are brave, that are front footed, that wants to seize the opportunities, that plays to win rather than to not lose”. That togetherness was on display at the Emirates Stadium where the Arsenal players wore black armbands in tribute to injured Beth Mead’s mum June, who lost her battle with cancer on 7 January.

Despite the loss of Mead and her partner Vivianne Miedema to anterior cruciate ligament injuries for the second half of the season, the Arsenal players began with the intensity and desire to win that was predicted by their manager.

The fear, though, was that the loss of Mead and Miedema, who together contributed 66% of Arsenal’s goals last season either scoring or assisting, would be too great in the tightly-fought contest that the meeting of these two sides often is. In the opening half it showed. The Gunners dominated but they could not find the back of the net.

Within the opening 21 minutes Arsenal had failed to test the Chelsea goalkeeper Zecira Musovic, who started ahead of Ann-Katrin Berger, four times with the Sweden forward Lina Hurtig the first to fire tamely at the keeper. Caitlin Foord was the next to lash an effort too close to her after some neat play on the left and the potent Norwegian midfielder Frida Maanum twice sending the ball straight at Musovic.

Arsenal’s Kim Little scores the opener from a penalty. Photograph: Tim Goode/PA

By half-time there could be little doubt that it would be Emma Hayes who would be the happier of the two managers with the game still goalless, but there was little to like in the performance of her side who let Arsenal wriggle out of their pressing far too easily.

The former Arsenal academy star Lauren James would deliver the Blues’ brightest moments when briefly in possession and battling back but was alone as the Gunners did well to contain Kerr and Guro Reiten.

The second half began much like the first, with Arsenal producing but not converting. A tidy cross from Steph Catley on the left was headed down by Hurtig but again it was straight at Musovic, with the keeper able to parry into the air before welcoming the ball into her embrace.

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It looked like the Gunners were opening the door, waiting to be punished for their profligacy, but then their luck changed. As Foord skated towards the edge of the box Niamh Charles clattered into her, it was a duel that started outside the box and ended with the players in a heap in it and referee Emily Heaslip pointed to the spot. If the strikers couldn’t do it the captain, Kim Little, could, converting coolly to lift the home crowd to life.

Moments later the margin should have been two, with Maanum’s cross coming off Foord before Charles was able to boot away from the line while lying tangled with Musovic.

Musovic would be called upon again, neatly pushing Catley’s long-range effort on to the bar.

For all the efforts on goal, Arsenal had scored once, from the spot; Chelsea needed just the one effort to draw level. And it was the substitute Jelena Cankovic’s in-swinging cross that was sent over Manuela Zinsberger by a thumping Kerr header.

It was decidedly against the run of play but Chelsea have shown time and time again that they can get results when not at their best and this will very much feel like a point won rather than two dropped for Hayes’s side.