Renee Slegers believed her Arsenal side "looked more like ourselves" after the Gunners thrashed Crystal Palace 5-0 in her first match in permanent charge. 

Leah Williamson opened the scoring in the sixth minute before goals from Alessia Russo, Beth Mead and Mariona Caldentey after the break sealed the victory. 

Arsenal's win moved them up to second in the Women's Super League table despite Manchester United's 4-2 triumph over Manchester City in the final game of Sunday's action.

Slegers' side dominated proceedings, ending the contest with an expected goals (xG) total of 3.28 from their 24 shots, restricting Palace to just one shot on target throughout. 

In what was Arsenal's first game back since their Women's Champions League win over Bayern Munich last month, Slegers said improvements had been made since their last display. 

"I'm super happy with the result," Slegers said. "If we could’ve signed for this beforehand, I would. I’m happy with the clean sheet, five goals, a variety of goals.

"If you look at the performance, I think you see that we haven’t played a game for a month. Our last game was here at Borehamwood against Bayern and you could see that in the first half.

"We didn’t really find the connection or the perfect timing and the quality on the ball, but we still got the 1-0 from a set-piece.

This team pic.twitter.com/AS28Ij5Dq5

— Arsenal Women (@ArsenalWFC) January 19, 2025

"We’ve been scoring more from set-pieces, which is positive as well.

"But then I think if you look at us in the second half, we looked more like ourselves, found better connections, positioning and speed in our attacks with better decision-making.

"I'm obviously very happy with the four goals we scored in the second half.

"We tweaked some details and, when the girls came on, starting with Caitlin Foord, we changed a little bit to the left side.

"The girls made a great impact coming on, the game changers, but mostly I think the girls just needed time together to play and get back into it."

Arsenal now have a run of three games in seven days to end January, starting with their Women's League Cup semi-final tie against Brighton on Wednesday .