An Ode to Noelle Maritz: The Unsung Hero of Arsenal’s 22/23 Season
The story began on a night in Southern France.
Lyon was, without a doubt, the hegemon of European women’s football, having won an astonishing five UWCL titles in a row from 2016 to 2020. Though the rise of Barcelona ended their unipolarity, the French side defeated the Catalans in the 2022 final to reclaim the trophy.
Arsenal, on the other side, was a sleeping giant. They’d dominated English football during the first decade of the century and won the UWCL in 2007 to round off a historic quadruple-winning season. But just as Lyon emerged as a superpower, the Gunners began their long decline.
Though the North London side had experienced something of a renaissance in recent years, they remained far from the might they had been under the legendary Vic Akers.
And though the reigning champions were troubled by injuries, they were still expected to come out on top during the Gunners’ visit to Parc Olympique Lyonnais in October 2022.
But the balance of power in European football was subtly shifting to the north of the English Channel as well as (less subtly) to the south of the Pyrenees.
England was on the up following the Lionesses’ triumph at the EURO that summer, and the Gunners’ sensational 5–1 victory was further proof of that.
But after the high comes the crash, and the Gunners were brutally sent crashing back down to earth by Beth Mead’s ACL injury just a month later.
Mead had been the star of that magical night in Lyon, netting two goals and an assist as the Gunners brought down the leviathan, and she was, without a doubt, the in-form player in European football, having been recognized as Player of the Tournament at the EURO.
With Mead out, the Gunners lost a cog without which their machine could not function. To understand why Mead’s injury derailed Arsenal’s 22/23 campaign, let us first consider how Jonas Eidevall set his team up and her role in the system.
The Gunners invariably lined up in a 4–2–3–1 with a double pivot of Lia Wälti and the skipper Kim Little. Brazil center back Rafaelle and England captain Leah Williamson formed the central defense, with Steph Catley or Katie McCabe as the left back and Laura Wienroither as the right back.
The center backs would split on either side of goalkeeper Manu Zinsberger, with Williamson drifting into the right half-space — roughly the same position a right-sided center back in a back three would take up — and Rafaelle mirroring her movement on the left.
Once she received the pass from Zinsberger, Williamson could either go long directly or carry the ball into the second line then play the through ball. Her ability to break opposition lines from deep was made especially dangerous by her wide positioning, allowing her direct access to the inside-right channel.
And this was where her link with Mead came to the fore.
While Caitlin Foord was a touchline winger, Mead was an inside forward who thrived in running in behind and getting on the score sheet. Her tendency to drift into the half-space and from there, attack the box, often saw Williamson releasing her directly in behind, slicing the opposition apart with a single long ball forward.
Of course, Mead was more than just a runner. What made her such a vital piece on Eidevall’s chessboard was her versatility, and she could just as well hug the touchline then beat her full back and put in crosses. With Mead often roaming, Wienroither would position herself accordingly.
If Mead came inside, then Wienroither would overlap. If Mead stayed wide, then Wienroither would underlap. And if Mead dropped deep, then Wienroither would push even higher into the half-space.
In the latter case, Williamson would play her long diagonal into Mead’s feet. The Gunners’ number 9 was strong enough to hold off defenders and technical enough to keep the ball glued to her feet, and Wienroither was at her best underlapping and combining with Mead to wreak havoc in the final third.
Whereas Wälti would often drop into the left back zone to allow either Catley or McCabe to advance to the second line, Little would often drift towards the touchline — into the right wing back zone — to allow Wienroither to push even higher into the final third.
Indeed, Mead and Wienroither both came into the 22/23 season in top form and formed an excellent partnership. With Little and Williamson in support, the right prong of Arsenal’s attack was a mighty one, as Lyon found out to their detriment.
As Mead hit ever higher levels, the Gunners became increasingly dependent on her; and when she tore her ACL, it had ruinous implications for their season.
The Gunners had gone into the new campaign with a paper-thin squad and their number 9’s injury left them with a 16-year-old Michelle Agyemang as their only fit right winger. (I’ve written more extensively on this in a previous article, link here)
The mistakes of the summer past had come back to haunt the Gunners, and Eidevall was forced back to the drawing board.
McCabe was the natural choice, and the Ireland captain had indeed played plenty of minutes at right wing in the seasons past, but she was the polar opposite of Mead.
While Mead would come inside and look to get in behind the opposition defense for through balls, McCabe would come inside and look to get on the ball in front of the opposition defense. Her great strength was her ability to unleash chaos with the ball at her feet, and McCabe was a source of creativity rather than output.
Mead’s injury had knock-on effects all over the pitch, and Wienroither was the most direly affected.
Mead had singlehandedly dominated the right flank, and though Wienroither played an important role in supporting her, there was usually not a great deal for her to do in attack. But with McCabe now ahead of her, Wienroither suddenly found herself having to assume considerably more responsibilities.
McCabe was a half-space creator who needed an overlapping full back to draw defenders away and provide her another passing option, and Wienroither was decidedly not that.
Wienroither was, first and foremost, a lockdown defender, and her great strength had always been her defensive ability. With Mead to spearhead the attack, Eidevall could afford to deploy a right back whose impact was primarily in her own third.
He pushed Wienroither high during buildup to support Mead, but also for the sake of getting her higher up the pitch as she was not trusted in buildup. Though her offensive utility was limited, Wienroither could nevertheless make an impact in the final third by underlapping and combining with her winger.
But that changed with Mead gone.
With Wienroither unable to hold width and McCabe lacking the positional discipline, Arsenal’s right flank was paralyzed. The center forward Stina Blackstenius would often pull out wide to make up for it, but she had limited technical ability and could do little more than hold up the ball and lay it off to a teammate.
And with Blackstesnius moving out wide and Wienroither usually remaining deeper in the half-space, the Gunners were left with neither the numbers to overload the opposition defense nor the box threat to put goalscoring chances away.
Eidevall needed a different kind of right back to make his machine tick again — a right back who could overlap McCabe to give the Gunners width and let Blackstenius remain central.
Enter Noelle Maritz.
Having arrived from Wolfsburg in 2020, Maritz had long been the Gunners’ first-choice right back. Though never flashy, Maritz was ever-reliable and had a stellar 21/22 campaign, providing the solid foundation that allowed Mead to hit those world-beating levels.
However, with Wienroither arriving at pre-season in the form of her life, Maritz found herself on the periphery with a fraction of the playing time she was used to. Rumors of a January exit swirled, but with his side in dire need of a reboot, Eidevall rolled the dice on his one-time starting right back.
Maritz was recalled to the starting eleven for the League Cup quarter-final against Aston Villa in late January and assisted Maanum’s opener en route to a 3–0 victory.
From that point on, she was once again, Arsenal’s first-choice right back.
The first half of Arsenal’s 22/23 campaign was overshadowed by losing Mead and their other star forward Vivianne Miedema in quick succession, and the Gunners stumbled into the second half, failing to win any of their first three WSL games.
Their title challenge had begun so promisingly back in September, but losing Meadema was a one-two punch that knocked all the air from their lungs.
And with a 2–1 defeat at the Academy Stadium, it looked to all the world like Arsenal’s title challenge was over.
The League Cup offered more promise.
A hard-fought 1–0 win over City saw the Gunners advance to the final — a chance to claim their first piece of silverware since 2019 and salvage something from the train wreck their season was fast turning into.
But for any of that to happen, Arsenal would have to beat Chelsea — their fellow London side that’d long come to dominate English football.
Chelsea had dealt Arsenal a resounding 3–0 defeat in the belayed 2021 FA Cup final and piped the Gunners to the WSL title by a single point months later. Now aiming to win their fourth WSL title running, the Blues showed no signs of slowing down, and the mood on the red side of London was overwhelmingly pessimistic.
Yet, it was Arsenal who came out on top, beating their old foes 3–1 to lift the League Cup.
Maritz was not the star of that afternoon, but she provided the foundation that allowed Arsenal’s stars to shine.
She had done that for Mead during the 21/22 season, and she did it for McCabe in the League Cup final. Her willingness to push on and provide the overlap allowed the Ireland captain to come inside and play like a second 10 next to Maanum, unleashing chaos in Chelsea’s defensive third.
Far from confining herself to the right half-space, McCabe often drifted central and even to the left like a true number 10, with Maanum happily swapping sides and drifting into the right half-space to maintain Arsenal’s attacking structure.
With Foord and Maritz providing width and Maanum and McCabe roaming and interchanging positions across zone 14 (the central area in front of the penalty area that’s traditionally occupied by the number 10), Blackstenius was able to remain central and constantly pose a threat in behind, scoring the equalizer in the 16th minutes and coming close to adding to her ledger several times.
In the 26th minute, for example, Maritz received the switch from Wälti and burst down the right, getting away from Niamh Charles after a quick one-two with Maanum and putting in the delivery. Foord chested down the cross and the ball found Blackstenius in the chaos that ensued, with the Swede’s header narrowly saved by Ann-Katrin Berger.
In the end, it was a relatively comfortable victory for the Gunners.
Maritz’s introduction gave Arsenal structure, and structure in turn provided the foundation that allowed their attackers to thrive.
Far from hindering it, structure enables freedom.
The knowledge that the wide lanes were occupied by teammates allowed McCabe and Maanum to play with more fluidity and allowed Blackstenius to remain closer to goal. And Maritz’s function, though simple, was instrumental all the same.
Maritz had never been a star, nor would she ever be one. But with Mead out for the season, she was the only member of the squad who could reliably provide width on the right. Her return to the starting eleven was far from a seismic event, but it laid the groundwork for the Gunners’ resurgence in the second half of the season.
Things remained in flux for a while after the final.
With a cascade of injuries, the versatile McCabe became something of a firefighter, being deployed wherever she was needed while Eidevall continued to tinker with his lineup, experimenting with playing Martiz at left back to allow Wienroither to start as well.
But by the end of March, he had a firm idea of what his new starting eleven looked like.
Maritz was returned to right back once and for all, partnered not by McCabe, but by January signing Victoria Pelova.
Having impressed at the EURO and faced off against the Gunners in the UWCL qualifiers for Ajax, the Dutch midfielder had long been on Arsenal’s radar.
Pelova, for her part, made no secret of her admiration for the North London side, and with the Gunners in desperate need of reinforcements, the stars were aligned for her to move to Meadow Park.
Whereas McCabe embodied chaos, Pelova symbolized control. But just like McCabe, Pelova tended to come inside from the right, opening up the flank for Maritz to advance into.
The visit to the Academy Stadium back in February was, simply put, a bad day at the office for the Gunners. Yet in defeat laid the seeds of their later revival, for the Pelova-Maritz partnership featured for the first time.
Six weeks would pass before the duo would start together on the right again, by which time the Gunners had lifted their first trophy in four years and won back-to-back WSL victories over Liverpool and Reading. Their season was back on track, and the North London derby away from home would test the strength of their revival.
The 5–1 scoreline left it beyond a shadow of a doubt that Arsenal were back.
And just in time for the biggest game of their season yet — the second leg of their UWCL quarter-final against Bayern Munich.
A top European side, Bayern Munich had won the first leg at home and would go on to clinch the Frauen-Bundesliga title that season. But the narrow 1–0 margin meant that the tie was far from over.
Two goals at home, and the Gunners would be through to their first semi-final in a decade.
The mood among some 20,000 red-and-white faithful at the Emirates was cautiously optimistic, but the hosts were dealt an early blow when their captain was forced off injured just 12 minutes in.
Little was the glue that held everything together — the conduit between the two ends of the pitch. The former Scotland international could come short, pick up the ball from the backline then carry it up the pitch and find one of the forwards, and she and Wälti together orchestrated the transition from defense to attack.
Losing Little was a bitter blow, but Eidevall was undeterred.
Williamson was to step into the midfield, while the young Lotte Wubben-Moy would take her place next to Rafaelle. And though they were down by yet another key player, the Gunners soldiered on and put on a counter-pressing clinic.
Eidevall’s side typically looked to funnel play out wide and double up on the opposition full back — a simple yet effective pressing trap. That night at the Emirates, the Gunners took an even more aggressive approach.
Pressure was applied immediately after the ball was lost with an emphasis on going man-to-man to block off passing lanes and collapse around the ball carrier with bodies, cutting the pitch in half and pinning the Bavarians against the touchline deep in their own third.
For all the talent at their disposal, Bayern never got into the game. Two counter-pressing situations led to goals for Maanum and Blackstenius in quick succession, and so Arsenal returned to the UWCL semi-finals after a ten-year absence.
Up next was City — a familiar and even more formidable foe. The Gunners were feeling the hangover from their exhilarating victory just four days ago, and the Cityzens dominated proceedings from the get-go.
Bunny Shaw put the visitors ahead just five minutes in, and the hosts were dealt yet another blow when Foord was forced off injured in the 36th minute, to be replaced by Wienroither.
A shift to a back three followed, and the Gunners dug deep to hold onto the 1–0 scoreline, just keeping themselves in the game. The fightback was sounded by Maanum’s goal in the 62nd minute, and McCabe made it 2–1 twelve minutes later with a rocket.
Once again, their backs were against the wall; once again, the Gunners persevered.
The game against City had pushed the Gunners to their very limit, and their visit to Leigh Sports Village two weeks later pushed them right past it. Williamson was forced to go off just fifteen minutes in, and scans would later confirm the worst — that she’d also torn her ACL.
Arsenal had lost three key players in three games, and the 1–0 loss to United extinguished the last flicker of their title hopes. And with a late defeat to Wolfsburg at the Emirates, the Gunners were out of the UWCL too.
Wienroither became their fourth case of ACL tear that season, and as the list of injuries grew, the Pelova-Maritz partnership became increasingly important for the Gunners. Both the left and the center would see considerable turnovers through the end of the season, but Pelova and Maritz were ever-present on the right.
Maritz had played more conservatively when Mead was ahead of her, often staying deeper to allow the left back to advance. But with Pelova needing an overlapper, Maritz was now to be the more adventurous full back.
The games against Tottenham and Bayern had seen those classic dynamics on the Gunners’ right-hand side, with Little (later Williamson) drifting into the right wing back zone to cover for Maritz while Pelova moved into the pockets and unleashed all her playmaking excellence from there.
However, while Maritz’s role as the flying full back revitalized Arsenal’s attack, it left them exposed on the other end of the pitch. The Switzerland international was not blessed with an abundance of recovery pace and the space in behind her became a major vulnerability in defensive transitions.
Williamson had the legs to cover for her, but Wubben-Moy was less mobile and less adept at defending out wide. The shift to the back three enforced by Williamson’s injury only exacerbated this, and Arsenal’s final game of the season against Aston Villa was a case in point.
Villa was blessed with one of the most devastating one-on-one wingers in the WSL in Kirsty Hanson, and the Scotland international wreaked havoc down the Gunners’ right. Though Maritz could hold her own, her lack of recovery pace meant that the burden of defending the 5’4 Hanson in transition fell onto the 5’10 Wubben-Moy.
The right back could either overlap Pelova or defend Hanson, but not both, and Eidevall had no way out of this dilemma — not when half his squad was out injured. With Wubben-Moy shoehorned out wide and faring badly against Hanson, the goalkeeper Sabrina D’Angelo was left exposed. In the end, the visitors rounded off an expectation-defying season with a 2–0 win at Meadow Park.
Maritz’s importance was clear for all to see by then, but as the Gunners became increasingly reliant on their number 16, so were her limitations. And as Hanson tore Arsenal’s right flank apart, it was a reminder of why Wienroither had displaced her at the beginning of the season.
Wienroither had been brought in because of her defensive prowess and her ability to underlap, and Maritz broke back into the side because her ability to overlap was needed. But as the curtains came down on the 22/23 season and the Gunners went into the transfer window determined to build a new title-winning side, the pendulum swung away from Maritz once and for all.
Canadian winger Cloé Lacasse had long been admired on the red side of North London and the Gunners were quick to secure her signature in the summer. And as the off-season gave way to pre-season, and the pre-season gave way to the new season, Mead inched ever closer to her return. She finally made her comeback in mid-October, and so the once-indispensable Pelova-Maritz partnership became obsolete.
Pelova had been signed with life after Little in mind, and Eidevall returned her to midfield in the 23/24 season with a view to grooming the Netherlands international as Little’s long-term successor.
Maritz was relegated back to the periphery, and McCabe’s reinvention as an inverted right back in the new campaign was the final nail in the coffin for her Arsenal career.
With the return to touchline wingers, something had to give. And while a player as technical and versatile as Pelova would be useful in any system, it was not the case with Maritz.
She was a traditional, overlapping full back in an era where full backs were increasingly expected to invert and buttress the rest defense against counterattacks, and her limited technical ability placed a hard ceiling on her usefulness in these deeper, more central areas.
Mead’s injury pushed the timetable back by a year, but Eidevall’s project was always going to evolve past her. And as McCabe took to her new role like a duck to water, it was clear for all to see that that time had arrived.
In the end, the two sides parted ways amicably, with Maritz becoming the third Arsenal player in as many seasons to join Villa.
She was never in the spotlight and was never fully appreciated by the fanbase during her time at Arsenal, but — as this article has hopefully shown — she played an important role before the project moved past her, especially during the second half of the 22/23 season.
Maritz stepped up when called upon and remained a professional long after her playing time dried up. She served the club well during her three and a half years as a Gunner and played an important part in ending Arsenal’s four-year trophy drought, and that’s how she should be remembered.
Special thanks to Louise Quirke for generously letting me use her pictures for this article.
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You might also enjoy my articles on Vivianne Miedema and Alessia Russo.
