Long gone are the days of the Wenger Emirates Stadium mortgage payment plan–European paradox, those years after being runners-up in 2006, when Arsenal would fight to the last every season to qualify for the Champions League only for their seemingly habitual heavy defeat at the R16 or occasionally quarter-final stage to be greeted as essential to their chances of qualifying again. After a couple of years of hoping against hope while Arsenal tried to repair their finances, elimination attained a grim inevitability that led to some of the bleakest nights at the ground this neutral observer has ever experienced. Small wonder that Mikel Arteta, who played in a handful of those games, has asked his fans to ‘bring the noise’ tonight.
That’s not the case tonight, though there was something disturbingly familiar about their performance in the first leg at Porto. They failed to find any urgency or the precision that would have given them the edge in a match polluted by the curse of broken play, the ball on the sidelines for long periods and the hosts, understandably, exploiting the opportunity to dawdle and draw Arsenal’s sting. Their uncompromising and diligent work defending corners also drove Arsenal to distraction. They’ve had three weeks to come up with an answer to the arts Pepe has perfected and taught for three decades.
Arteta’s side were magnificent for six of their eight successive league wins and found a way with skill and tenacity in the other two – the victories over Liverpool and Brentford. Martin Odegaard thinks the experience of the Brentford game, when they overcame the disruption caused by the ball being out of play so long and Brentford’s cannily organised resilience, equips them to prevail tonight. “It was a really good practice for this game coming up,” the captain said.
“We had to deal with a lot of different situation, a lot of time-wasting. We had to control our emotions the whole game and I think we did that brilliantly. It was really good practice for another big game and we did really well.”
Porto, third and seven points behind Sporting, have won three and drawn one of their four league games since beating Arsenal, including a terrific 5-0 victory over second-placed Benfica in which Galeno, matchwinner of the first leg of this tie, scored twice and his fellow Brazilians, Wendell and Pepe, bagged one each. The fifth goalscorer was Danny Namaso, known as Danny Loader in his Reading days who will start on the bench tonight given the prolific form of Evanilson, who has scored 21 goals this season, through the middle, Galeno from the left, the other Pepe scheming and the manager’s son, Francisco Conceicao, on the right.
