Leah Williamson shared her excitement on social media as the Arsenal captain made her first start in 291 days after recovering from an ACL injury.

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Williamson started against West HamAlmost 10 months since she made it to the starting XIHeading towards full-match fitness WHAT HAPPENED?

Williamson's journey back from an ACL injury, suffered in April last year, has been arduous and exhaustive. The injury denied her the opportunity to captain the Lionesses at the Women's World Cup. However, her perseverance paid off as she made her return to the pitch against Reading, followed by her starting line-up appearance against West Ham over the weekend after close to 10 months.

She shared a picture on her Instagram handle and wrote: "291 days🤍".

AdvertisementGettyTHE BIGGER PICTURE

Williamson's return couldn't have come at a better time for Arsenal, as they trail Chelsea in the WSL title race by six points after their latest defeat to the Hammers. The Gunners manager, Jonas Eidevall, revealed that she is heading towards full-match fitness and has recovered well before facing London City in the WSL FA Cup.

WHAT EIDEVALL SAID

Speaking to reporters, Eidevall informed: "She has recovered well from the [West Ham] game, which was pleasing. I thought her performance was good. It was really nice to see her back playing in the WSL again.

"Now we need to see how she trains and then it's a team decision on who's going to start tomorrow. Then we recover and then we train again and then we see against Manchester City. That's way too early to say something about but so far so good."

DID YOU KNOW?

Remarkably, Williamson joins Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema as the third Arsenal player to make a successful return from an ACL injury this season. However, Laura Wienroither is still recovering from her ACL injury but has joined team training this week.

"[Laura] is progressing," Eidevall said. "She has started to join very early bits of team training, as of this week, so that's very pleasing. But that obviously also means that there is no way she's going to return to play on this side of the international window and after that, we probably can give a more accurate update on where she's at."