Alessia Russo and Aggie Beever-Jones — two England forwards, two very different nights
· Yahoo Sports
Confidence, a quality that is so intangible and elusive. When strikers are full of it, scoring goals for fun, you can see it in every action. There is a temptation to want to bottle up that feeling knowing that a goal drought may come. Belief seeps away, desperation kicks in and all you want is to sip from the “confidence” bottle.
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On Wednesday night, in opposite ends of the capital, two England centre forwards had differing fortunes in the Champions League.
Alessia Russo burst into life for Arsenal, hitting a hat-trick against Benfica after a patchy start to the season. Those goals made her the top-scoring English woman in the history of the Champions League.
That superb performance came just after Chelsea’s Aggie Beever-Jones, starting in their 2-0 win over Roma, struggled on, extending her goalless run for her club to more than seven months.
Beever-Jones takes one touch.
Then two.
It’s the third that betrays her, providing Roma defender Shukurat Oladipo enough time to close the gap, to slide in and nick the ball out from under the England international’s feet just yards from the Roma net. But more importantly it betrays the ruse, the fleeting sense that anything other than this outcome – Beever-Jones head in hands, goalkeeper Hannah Hampton in synchronised agony at the other end having seemingly sent the Chelsea striker through on inevitable goal and Chelsea ahead in their Champions League group stage match against Roma – was bound to happen.
It has been this way for a while. Since March 15, in fact, when the 23-year-old provided one of two goals in Chelsea’s 2-0 League Cup final victory over Manchester United. Since, it has been 15 Chelsea matches across all competitions without a goal.
You can tell. To watch Beever-Jones in recent weeks is to experience a kind of desperate hope, a tangible absence of easy faith. So there’s little surprise in the stadium when Beever-Jones takes a third touch when she should bury the chance on the second.
Half an hour later, she’s in the box, spinning, making space. She should bury it. Instead, it is tame, manageable, a shot more afraid of not finding the target than beating the keeper.
Droughts happen. The problem for Beever-Jones is that, at the moment, this is transpiring to be a greater problem for her than Chelsea. In the end, Chelsea fished out a comfortable 2-0 win over Roma, goals arriving from half-time substitute Ellie Carpenter and Sandy Baltimore. Beever-Jones was subbed on 55 minutes, managing one shot on target and zero chances created.
This has predominantly been how the season has transpired.
Chelsea are undefeated across all competitions and in attacking sense, they have been transformed compared to 2025-26. They lead the WSL in goals scored (21), xG (21.3), shots on target per match (8.0) and big chances (36). Across all competitions, 13 different Chelsea players have found the back of the net this season.
Yet, it’s not Beever-Jones, who signed a new four-year contract in the summer, who has helped drive Chelsea’s attacking numbers upwards. Rather, amid Beever-Jones’ struggles, head coach Sonia Bompastor is finding ways to circumvent them: pushing Keira Walsh further forward to join in on attacks, using Lauren James as a focal point, overloading the final third with her wingbacks.
Malard, who replaced Beever-Jones against Roma, has scored six in eight appearances. Despite not scoring against Roma or registering any of her two shots on target, the French striker played with the kind of easy abandon that comes with having six goals in eight appearances.
And this is the worry for Beever-Jones. Niggling ligament injuries have been cruel to the Chelsea academy graduate, but two summers ago she was England’s heir apparent to Alessia Russo (more on her later). The former Chelsea head coach Emma Hayes decreed Beever-Jones a world beater in the making. Since her 2024-25 season in which she scored 13 goals across 39 appearances, Beever-Jones has scored just six in 32.
Wednesday’s Champions League match was Beever-Jones’ first start since the 1-1 draw with Aston Villa to commence the WSL season. She has had ankle issues but England head coach Sarina Wiegman didn’t select her for the most recent England squad because of performance despite the notable absence of No 9 options. It is a suggestion that, ahead of a World Cup summer, Wiegman may be considering that finding goals elsewhere is more productive than waiting for confidence to rediscover itself.
In north London, Russo takes one touch, nudging the ball forward, her second is a laser into the bottom corner. A deft header from a corner doubled Arsenal’s lead and one clinical strike from the penalty spot rounded off her first Champions League hat-trick.
Wearing the captain’s armband, Russo delivered exactly what Arsenal needed: goals. It is as simple as that. The England No 9 was in a rut at the start of the season, failing to score in Arsenal’s first five games. It happens with strikers. Confidence dips and no matter how hard you try, it just won’t go your way. The 27-year-old is heavily relied upon by both England and Arsenal and that expectation can weigh heavily.
Russo shares with England men’s striker Harry Kane, the 2026 men’s Ballon d’Or winner and one of her role models growing up, great humility and an insatiable work ethic. As is typical of Russo, despite hitting a rough patch, she continued to graft in training, focusing on her finishing, rep after rep, trying not to over-complicate matters. Her celebration after dispatching the winning goal, a penalty, in the north London derby was an outpouring of relief. She backed that up against Benfica, taking her to nine goals in seven matches for club and country.
At Meadow Park she did it with Wiegman watching on. Still playing in the No 10 position as opposed to her more natural striker role, Russo looked sharp from the off, her footwork neat and tidy, pinging the ball in and out. She battled Benfica’s defenders, protecting the ball with astute hold-up play and linking up with team-mates.
There has been a constant debate as to why Arsenal head coach Renee Slegers still plays Russo as a No 10 when she is most potent in the box. In England’s 5-0 win against Greece, the centre forward scored twice from running in behind, whereas with Arsenal she is dutifully plugging a gap in attacking midfield and drops a lot deeper.
By deploying Russo further from goal, she has had fewer touches in the opposition box and shots on target than previous seasons but Slegers does not see the discussion as so black and white since players in the No 9 and No 10 can interchange.
“She’s a nine and a half for me,” said Slegers after the match, praising Russo’s execution of both roles. The difficulty for Russo is the expectation to be consistently clinical in front of goal as well as doing the leg work for 90 minutes.
On Wednesday, however, she managed to do both and looked back to her best: calm, free and confident.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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