Aston Villa have sacked Natalia Arroyo following a disappointing start to the Women’s Super League season, with the club winless after four matches and sitting second-bottom of the table. Arroyo was dismissed following Villa’s 4-0 defeat away to Tottenham. The defeat was their second of the campaign, with Villa also losing 4-1 to Manchester City. Their other two matches ended in draws, including a 1-1 draw against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, where Villa secured their first-ever WSL point at the home of the Blues.
There is little doubt that Villa’s start has fallen short of expectations. However, Arroyo’s departure also raises a bigger question: has changing the manager addressed Villa’s biggest problem, or is the club taking a step back at a time when the squad itself still needs strengthening?
Arroyo’s time at Villa comes to an end:
Natalia Arroyo joined Aston Villa in January 2025 on a three-and-a-half-year contract, replacing Shaun Goater, who had taken temporary charge following Robert de Pauw’s departure. The Spaniard arrived at Villa after four impressive years with Real Sociedad, where she guided the club to a second-place finish in the 2021-22 season and a Copa de la Reina final during her final campaign. A former Barcelona and Espanyol player, Arroyo also spent time working as a journalist before moving into coaching.
When she took over at Villa, the club had managed just two wins from their opening 12 WSL matches and were involved in a battle near the bottom of the table. Her first months in charge were difficult, with Villa losing five consecutive league matches as the team adapted to a new manager. However, they recovered to win their final five league games of the campaign and finish sixth. Villa then finished ninth during Arroyo’s first full season, collecting 20 points from 22 matches. Four consecutive defeats towards the end of that campaign highlighted some of the inconsistencies that would continue into the new season. Now, after just four games of the 2026-27 campaign, Arroyo is gone.
The results are a problem, but so is the bigger picture:
Villa’s opening four league matches tell part of the story. A 1-1 draw at Chelsea was a significant result. It was the club’s first-ever WSL point at Stamford Bridge and showed that Villa are capable of competing against some of the best teams in the division. There was also little shame in facing Manchester City and Tottenham. Those are difficult fixtures for any side, and Villa’s 4-1 defeat to City and 4-0 loss to Tottenham came against teams operating at a different level in terms of resources and squad depth.
The issue is that Villa have not yet shown enough consistency to suggest they can regularly compete with those sides or separate themselves from the teams around them. The defensive numbers are concerning, but so too, is what is happening at the other end of the pitch.
Where are the goals coming from?
This is perhaps the biggest question facing Villa after Arroyo’s departure. The club lost Kirsty Hanson during the summer, with last season’s top scorer and player of the year moving to Tottenham. Losing an important attacking player is one thing. Losing that player without bringing in an obvious replacement creates a much bigger problem.
Managers can be changed, formations can be changed and the coaching staff can be changed, but ultimately somebody still has to score the goals. Villa have already found that difficult at the beginning of this season, and replacing the manager does not automatically solve that problem. That is why Arroyo’s dismissal needs to be viewed alongside the club’s recruitment and squad-building decisions. If Villa believe the team is capable of achieving significantly more, then a managerial change may be understandable. But if the squad has clear weaknesses, particularly in attack, the new manager will inherit many of the same problems.
A step back or a necessary reset?
There is an argument that Villa had to act. Four league games without a win, two heavy defeats and a team struggling for consistency is a difficult position for any manager, particularly when the club has ambitions of establishing itself higher up the WSL. But there is also a danger that changing manager becomes a way of addressing the symptoms rather than the cause. Villa had already experienced significant managerial change before Arroyo arrived. Robert de Pauw’s spell ended after a difficult start to the 2024-25 season, Arroyo then came in and helped turn the campaign around before guiding the team to ninth in her first full season.
Now another reset is required. That instability matters because the next manager will need time to implement their own ideas, while also inheriting a squad that has already lost one of its most important attacking players. If Villa’s ambition is to move towards the top half of the WSL, then the appointment of the next manager will only be one part of the solution. The club will also need to demonstrate that it can build a squad capable of supporting those ambitions.
Sorensen takes temporary charge:
Brian Sorensen, Villa’s women’s technical adviser, has been placed in temporary charge of the team. The former Everton manager joined Villa as a technical adviser in March after leaving the Merseyside club following four years in charge. His first game in temporary charge brought an immediate response, with Villa beating Newcastle 3-1 in the Subway Women’s League Cup. The result gives Villa some much-needed momentum after the disappointment of Sunday’s defeat at Tottenham and, importantly, shows that the squad can respond quickly to a change in circumstances.
Sorensen had originally been due to join the Republic of Ireland coaching staff for their upcoming Women’s World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan, but is now expected to remain with Villa during the international break. Chris Roberts, who previously worked with Sorensen at Everton, is also part of Villa’s coaching set-up. The Newcastle victory does not remove the questions surrounding Villa, but it does provide Sorensen and the players with a positive starting point.
What happens next for Villa?
Villa now have an opportunity to take a step back and assess where the women’s team is heading. The club have shown that they can compete with strong opposition. Taking a point from Chelsea at Stamford Bridge was an important achievement, and difficult fixtures against Manchester City and Tottenham should be viewed in their proper context.
But Villa also need to be honest about where the squad currently stands. If the objective is to compete consistently in the upper half of the WSL, then the club needs more than a new manager. It needs the right recruitment, greater attacking threat and a squad with enough depth to withstand the demands of the league.
The departure of Hanson makes that particularly important. You cannot lose your leading scorer and player of the year and simply expect a new manager to make the problem disappear. That leaves Villa at something of a crossroads. The club can use Arroyo’s departure as the beginning of another cycle of change, or it can use it as an opportunity to look at the wider structure of the women’s team and ask why progress has stalled.
The immediate priority will be finding a new manager and getting points on the board. But the bigger challenge for Villa is making sure the next appointment is part of a clear long-term plan, rather than simply the next attempt to change the direction of a team that still has many questions to answer.
