Key events
31 mins: And then down the other end Trincao finds Goncalves, whose shot is rubbish.
29 mins: A chance for Arsenal! They pass it right, they pass it left, and then they find a ball into the area, Zubimendi prods it infield, and Diomande gets in the way of Gyokeres’ first-time effort. As Ally McCoist points out on commentary, he needed a left-foot blast rather than a right-foot nudge.
27 mins: Now Sporting win a corner, Goncalves takes, and the ball bounces off a few Sporting heads before it’s eventually humped clear.
25 mins: Madueke curls the ball in, and Rui Silva claims.
24 mins: Madueke is tripped by Araujo as he advances off the right flank towards the penalty area. Free kick.
22 mins: Arsenal win and waste a free-kick and everyone is forward for it, which means when it’s passed to Catamo he is essentially clean through on goal, albeit about 90 yards out. Martinelli manages to chase him down and takes the ball off him soon after he gets into Arsenal’s half.
19 mins: Now Madueke nicks the ball away from Araujo and it rolls to Gyokeres, who shoots well over the bar from the edge of the area.
18 mins: Saliba gives the ball away to Hjulmand, who passes on to Trincao, whose shot goes wide.
17 mins: Suarez is played through, bursts into the left of the penalty area, and then a) shoots across goal and wide enough that it ends in an Arsenal throw-in, and b) is given offside.
16 mins: Catamo, back on the pitch and showing no ill effects, is now getting booed. Sporting zip the ball around a bit, working it out of defence and into midfield, but that’s where this particular story ends.
14 mins: Catamo is still down pretending to be injured, while two physios pretend to be looking after him. The referee speaks to both captains about something, and tells the physios to clear off.
12 mins: Catamo takes on Hincapie, gets to the byline, runs the ball out of play and then goes down clutching a shin and rolling around. Hincapie did make contact with his ankle, but not where Catamo is clutching, and about two paces before he went down. That is, to be frank, embarrassing.
10 mins: Two goals already in Munich, where Bayern have just equalised to make it 1-1 on the night, and 3-2 on aggregate.
7 mins: An early corner for Arsenal, but Rice’s delivery clears everyone and bounces out of play.
6 mins: Arsenal have had 82% of the early possession. Now they get into Sporting’s penalty area for the first time, great work from Eze to keep the ball and find Madueke, but that’s as good as it gets.
Photograph: Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Ed Sykes/Apl/Sportsphoto
4 mins: Now Suarez goes down, also thinking he was fouled, and again the referee waves play on. Promising first few minutes from the man in black. “This might be me trying to deal with my stress as an Arsenal fan, but I’m feeling pollyannaish about this match,” writes Kári Tulinius. “If the gunners win, they’ll have some much needed self-belief for the league run-in. If they lose it could be the kind of rock-bottom that teams use to kick against and get momentum back. The problem with the latter is that one person’s rock bottom is another’s rung on a ladder into the depths.”
2 mins: Very high-tempo start. Eze passes to Gyokeres, who plays a first-time return but Eze has run into a defender and fallen over. He thinks he was fouled, but the referee disagrees.
1 min: Peeeeeep! Luis Suarez gets the ball rolling.
The captains exchange pennants. Sporting’s looks rubbish. Not even embroidered. It’s like they forgot their proper pennant and had to buy one from a dodgy bloke outside the ground. It’s less a pennant than an insult.
The players are on the pitch! They have departed the tunnel!
“Aren’t we all loving the latest in the ‘Carry On’ series, Carry On Arsenal,” writes Jeremy Boyce, who’s clearly got his finger on the cultural pulse. Zeitgeist, consider yourself nailed. “Honestly, you really couldn’t make it up, except they manage to do so and put out a new edition every year. As a neutral it’s totally titterworthy watching them blow everything they’re going for, Frankie Howard would be proud of them. Arteta is perfect for the James Robertson Justice role, always believing they’re going in the right direction. Rice is Sid James, streetwise and smoking crafty fag wondering how it’s all gone so wrong. Kenneth Williams? Charles Hawtree? Dowman is clearly the outlier Jim Dale figure, entertaining, slight, light, peripheral but influential. Their problem is the Hattie Jacques weight of expectation that may ultimately be a burden too heavy to bear. She was a great performer, are they?”
Mikel Arteta has an extremely unrevealing chat with TNT Sport. “We know the opportunity that we have, so we’re very excited for the game,” he says. “We need to be more efficient than we were [on Saturday],” he adds. On his squad’s fitness issues, he says: “To be fair, all the boys are desperate to play.”
It’s a curious thing, this training top: in photos those vertical stripes are very bright, on the TV (mine, at least) they’re very subtle. I haven’t seen one in the flesh to know the truth of it.
An email! “Barry Glendenning is absolutely right – Arteta’s anxiety and stress has rubbed off on his players and that is why they are losing,” writes Jeff Sax. “He lacks the composure and confidence that Pep for example has.” I think there’s some truth to this, but I’m also just not completely convinced by this squad. I mean, it’s really good. But it’s not great, and the real issue is that when the players look around the dressing room, that’s also what they think. They look like they don’t truly believe they can win the league, and perhaps the only thing that can convince them they’re a title-winning squad is actually winning the title.
Asked yesterday whether either Bukayo Saka or Jurrien Timber might play tonight, Mikel Arteta said: “Maybe one of them, let’s see.” Well we have seen, and the answer is neither of them, and also no Martin Odegaard or Riccardo Calafiori. But Declan Rice, who missed training yesterday, is in.
The teams!
Team sheets have been handed in, and tonight’s lineups are as follows:
Arsenal: Raya; Mosquera, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie; Zubimendi, Rice; Madueke, Eze, Martinelli; Gyokeres. Subs: Arrizabalaga, Setford, White, Jesus, Norgaard, Trossard, Havertz, Dudziak, Lewis-Skelly, Dowman, Salmon.
Sporting: Rui Silva; Eduardo Quaresma, Diomande, Goncalo Inacio, Araujo; Hjulmand, Morita; Catamo, Francisco Trincao, Pedro Goncalves; Suarez. Subs: Joao Virginia, Debast, Geovany Quenda, Vagiannidis, Kochorashvili, Faye, Daniel Braganca, Joao Simoes, Flavio Goncalves, Salvador Blopa, Rafael Nel, Ricardo Mangas.
Referee: François Letexier (France).
Preamble
Hello world! This is Arsenal’s 12th Champions League game of the season, and they’ve won 10 and drawn one of the previous 11. Europe is their happy place, and this the only competition in which they’ve played and not lost over the last month, in which time they’ve been dumped out of the FA Cup by Southampton, lost a League Cup final to Manchester City, been turned over at home by Bournemouth and generally allowed the wheels to come very much and emphatically off. Tonight, nursing a 1-0 lead from the first leg, they can and indeed need to give themselves a much-needed morale boost ahead of Sunday’s Premier League enormoclash at the Etihad.
A few happy omens for Arsenal:
The record of English clubs in two-legged Champions League ties against Portuguese opponents is jolly good – 10 wins on the spin since Benfica upset Liverpool in 2005-06.
The record of English clubs in Champions League or European Cup quarter-finals against Portuguese opponents is even better: played nine, won nine.
Sporting haven’t won a competitive match in England in 10 attempts since they beat Middlesbrough 3-2 in the 2004-05 Uefa Cup.
Less happy for Arsenal:
Here’s Ed Aarons’ match preview:
There was a dramatic pause when Mikel Arteta was asked what he wants from the Arsenal supporters against Sporting on Wednesday evening in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final.
After his attempts to rouse them before the early kick-off against Bournemouth at the weekend by telling them to “bring your lunch” backfired spectacularly with a costly home defeat that ended with some fans booing the Premier League leaders off the pitch, this time the message was more considered.
“No fear. Pure fire,” said the Arsenal manager. “That’s what I want to see from the players, from the people, from myself. That’s it. Go for it because the opportunity is unbelievable. We are in April, we have an incredible opportunity ahead of us. Let’s go for it.”
