We look ahead to the first leg of this UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final at the Emirates Stadium with our Arsenal vs Lyon prediction and preview.
Arsenal vs Lyon Stats: The Key Insights
Lyon are narrow favourites with the Opta supercomputer for the first leg, with the French club winning 37.3% of pre-match simulations compared to Arsenal’s 36.5%. Arsenal are aiming to reach their second UEFA Women’s Champions League final after 2006-07, when they became – and remain – the only English side to win the competition. Lyon have progressed from each of their last 11 semi-final ties in the UEFA Women’s Champions League since they were eliminated by Duisburg in 2008-09.Arsenal play host to perennial winners Lyon in the first leg of their UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final tie this weekend, and they’ll need to end a run of four successive semi-final eliminations if they are to reach the final in Lisbon next month.
The Gunners have lost six of their seven ties and won just one of 14 matches at this stage of the Champions League (D3 L10), with that victory coming in 2006-07 against Brøndby when they went on to win the competition for the first and only time.
Lyon’s first campaign in the competition came the season after Arsenal’s sole success, with the Gunners their first ever knockout-stage opponents in the 2007-08 quarter-finals. Since then, the French side have reached 11 finals and lifted the trophy eight times, twice as often as any other team (Eintracht Frankfurt – 4).
Arsenal are one of the most in-form teams in Europe right now, winning the most points in the WSL since Renée Slegers took over as manager from Jonas Eidevall in November (40), and winning six of seven Women’s Champions League games under the Dutch coach (L1).
Lyon, meanwhile, have already guaranteed they will finish top of the French Première Ligue regular season, securing the top seed for the play-offs with three games remaining after a 4-0 win over Fleury last month.
Across the UWCL this season, the Gunners rank second for possession (62.6%) and number of open-play sequences with 10+ passes (149), and third for field tilt (76.9%), regularly able to exert dominance over the opposition.
The problem heading into this semi-final tie is that Lyon (79.0%) are one of those sides with a greater field tilt than Arsenal and have hounded their opposition into submission this season, winning their eight games by an aggregate score of 25-2 in response to being last season’s runners-up.
Les Fenottes are recording the most high turnovers per game (19.8) and shot-ending high turnovers per game (3.6) in the Women’s Champions League this season.
Lyon are just as dominant at the other end of the field, keeping the most clean sheets (6) and conceding the fewest goals (2) in the 2024-25 Women’s Champions League. Their 11 shots on target faced and 3.7 expected goals against are also comfortably the lowest.
Nevertheless, only Barcelona’s Clàudia Pina (7) has scored more goals in the Women’s Champions League this season than Arsenal’s Alessia Russo (6); no English player has netted more times in a single edition of the competition on record (since 2009-10), with Fran Kirby (2020-21 for Chelsea) and Danielle Carter (2013-14 for Arsenal) the only ones to match that tally.
Russo’s Spanish teammate Mariona Caldentey has chipped in with five goals in the UWCL this season, the most she’s managed in a single campaign (nine previous seasons with Barcelona).
Arsenal’s loan star Chloe Kelly has recorded six assists across her last nine Women’s Champions League appearances, despite starting only five of those matches. Two of those came in Arsenal’s second-leg comeback against Real Madrid in the previous round.
But for all of the talent at Arsenal’s disposal, Lyon arguably have the edge in terms of experience – they’ve plenty of players who’ve been here before. Two of the top three all-time appearance makers Wendie Renard (124) and Eugénie Le Sommer (101) play for Lyon, as well as the UEFA Women’s Champions League all-time top goalscorer, Ada Hegerberg (66).
And then Eugénie Le Sommer is someone who’s done it on this stage before, boasting six semi-final goals in the Women’s Champions League, with four of those coming against English opposition (2 vs Arsenal, 1 vs Man City, 1 vs Chelsea).
But it’s someone aiming to get her hands of the Champions League trophy for the first time who is making the biggest waves in the competition this season, with Kadidiatou Diani directly involved in the most goals of any player (9 – 5 goals, 4 assists).
And 21-year-old Haitian striker Melchie Dumornay will have to be watched carefully given she has been directly involved in 11 goals in her 12 UWCL appearances for Lyon (6 goals, 5 assists), both scoring and assisting in her only two previous semi-final appearances (vs PSG).
Arsenal vs Lyon Head-to-Head
Arsenal have won just one of their six UEFA Women’s Champions League matches against Lyon (D1 L4) and against no side have the Gunners suffered more defeats in the competition than Les Fenottes (4 – level with Wolfsburg).
The pair last met in the 2022-23 group stage, with both sides winning their away game; Arsenal inflicting the heaviest ever UEFA Women’s Champions League defeat on the French side – who were then led by current Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor – when winning 5-1, before later losing 1-0 at the Emirates Stadium.
That is one of three away wins Lyon have recorded over Arsenal and they are unbeaten on all seven of their trips to face English sides in the UEFA Women’s Champions League (W5 D2); that is the most away games a side have played against teams from a single nation without losing at least once.
Lyon and Arsenal have met in the semi-finals of this competition once before, in 2010-11, when the French side won both legs (2-0 home, 3-2 away). Lyon also progressed from their only other knockout tie with Arsenal in the competition, in the 2007-08 quarter-finals (0-0 home, 3-2 away).
Former Arsenal and current Lyon manager Joe Montemurro has faced the Gunners in the UEFA Women’s Champions League twice previously, drawing 1-1 and losing 1-0 in the 2022-23 group stage with Juventus.
Arsenal vs Lyon Prediction
The Opta supercomputer makes Lyon marginal favourites to take a lead back to France for the second leg of this semi-final tie, giving them a 37.3% chance of winning on Saturday compared to 36.5% for Arsenal.
A 26.2% chance is given for this first-leg encounter to end level, but don’t count on that given that none of Lyon’s last 28 Women’s Champions League matches have been drawn (W24 D4) since a 1-1 stalemate with Chelsea in the 2018-19 semi-finals.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 2,000 domestic women’s football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Saturday, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
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Arsenal vs Lyon Prediction: UWCL Semi-Final Preview Opta Analyst.
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