please log in to view this image Venue: Emirates Stadium KO time: 17:55 TV channel: BT Sport Overall record: Played: 11 Won: 6 Drawn: 0 Lost: 5 Last six meetings: Olympiacos 1-3 Arsenal Arsenal 1-2 Olympiacos Olympiacos 0-1 Arsenal Olympiacos 0-3 Arsenal Arsenal 2-3 Olympiacos Olympiacos 2-1 Arsenal please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image Team News: Arsenal could be without talented youngster Bukayo Saka, with the England international nursing an injury. Other than that there are no known issues and manager Mikel Arteta is expected to have a fully fit squad at his disposal. Meanwhile, Olympiacos manager Pedro Martins will be unable to call upon the services of veteran Greek centre-back Avraam Papadopoulos, Portuguese centre-back Ruben Semedo and Greek winger Mario Vrousai. There are doubts over the availability of Senegalese centre-back Ousseynou Ba.
By the sound of things, Saka may be out for a week or two, as he has a hamstring issue. I don’t mind him having a break, as he’s been overplayed and you can tell he’s not having as much impact on games as usual. But we’ve got excellent depth on the flanks, so I’m not overly worried. Hope he recovers soon though. It’s the international break soon, too, so I’m hoping he’ll have extra time to rest. RE Auba: Judging by his and Arsenal’s social media posts, I think he’s fine. Smiling like usual and posting regularly like usual. I expect him to start.
I'd rest Saka for this one. He's played loads of football, and we're going to need him for the (hopefully) later rounds of this comp and a push for a european spot in the league. Auba will be fine, I'm pretty certain that disciplinary issue is behind both him and Arteta and I would expect him to start. He's starting to find his old form again too, 6 in his last 7 games, so he's also going to be crucial for the remainder of the season. On another note, would you offer Elneny a new contract ? He's been really valuable since he came back from Besiktas and is a really good option to bring off the bench.
It depends. If he's happy to be a 4th choice squad option, and maintain the low wages he's on, then I don't mind keeping him. However, he shouldn't be starting. He generally does well when he comes off the bench, but when he starts, he's not as impactful. Midfield is an area we need to upgrade in the Summer. Yet I don't know if we will. Arteta seems to like the Partey-Xhaka midfield axis. I'm still yet to be convinced it's a long-term solution. I know Xhaka's (overall) played quite well of late, but I still think we need someone more dynamic and athletic next to Partey in midfield. Elneny as a rotation option or to bring on for ball retention when seeing a game out is fine I suppose.
That midfield issue is a conundrum. We have odergaard on loan who we should be trying to snap Real’s arm off to buy on a permanent deal. Ceballos, I would send back. He’s decent enough, but he doesn’t offer enough for the money he would cost. The Partey/Xhaka pairing looks good to me, but it’s still early days. I would keep Elneny as back up. But I think we still need to buy a deep lying creative mid in the summer.
This was the issue we were always going to face with Odegaard sadly - if he did well, Real would be more determined to keep him at the club or other suitors, in better financial positions than us, would be made alert to his talent and could swoop under our noses. His value at the moment will be very high and Madrid are conscious of that. If we can get him on loan for one more season, I think that'd be a big positive. It'd buy us a bit more time to explore our options too, if in the event Madrid do want him back.
Another turgid performance! Don't know what is wrong with our star players and signing new impressive deals. Auba seems to be a shadow of his former self. Signed a new deal and he appears to have lost his hunger!
Well I knew it wouldnt be a high scoring game today. Thought we looked very lethargic.The substitutions improved things (Martinelli looked dangerous) Auba was very unlucky to not have scored a couple of goals - finishing was just slighly off.
I thought Auba was just unlucky. Technique and decision making was good for both those chances in the second half just didnt quite come off.
Really abject performance tonight. Players looked knackered. Either that or their mindset going into this was completely wrong. Thankfully, we'd done enough in the first leg to see us through, but we can't perform like this in these latter rounds against better calibre opposition. Saying that, we did miss a lot of chances ourselves. Auba in particular was shocking tonight. Odegaard coming on helped us greatly, and Martinelli showed tremendous tenacity in his short cameo. The only positive about tonight is at least we're through to the quarter-finals.
He was unlucky with the back heel, but the other chances he really should have scored. It wasn't just his profligacy, though. He didn't lead the line well at all tonight. It was one of his poorest performances.
At least we can take some solace in the fact we’re through and our lovely neighbours got dumped out so Spursy.
I don't even care about our result tonight now. We're through and Spurs ****ed it up in only the way that Spurs can #spursy
Arsenal vs Slavia Prague in the next round. Not easy, as they dispatched Rangers and Leicester. Could have been much worse, though. Glad to have avoided Man Utd, Roma and Ajax.
Slavia Prague are ****e. Give over. I'm sure Henry scored about 27 goals against them in one game in the CL back in the day. Ipso facto they're crap.