Arsenal have clinched the three points from their opening Europa League clash of the season, beating FC Zurich 2-1 in Switzerland.
The Gunners made as many as seven changes from the team who lost to Manchester United at the weekend, with three players in Marquinhos, Fabio Vieira and Matt Turner making their full debuts .
The two sides started the match rather evenly, with the home side really trying to assert things by pushing up the field, but their eagerness saw them pay the price early on when a rapid breakaway move saw them punished.
Fabio Vieira showed a touch of class as he set Eddie Nketiah free down the left hand side, and he used his pace to get down the wing before whipping a low cross into the path of Marquinhos to score on his debut.
We began to assert our dominance after the goal as we looked to take the game to our rivals, but just as we looked destined to take our lead into the break, Nketiah was then the culprit as he brought down the Zurich striker for a penalty just before the break, which they duly tucked away into the bottom left, sending Turner the wrong way.
It seemed to be all one-way traffic shortly into the new half however, although our efforts weren’t really testing the opposition goalkeeper, that was until Marquinhos and Nketiah combined again, this time with the Brazilian’s in-swinging cross teeing it up perfectly for the striker to head home.
The boss moved to make a triple change soon after which seemed to slow our progress, with Zinchenko, Saka and Odegaard coming in for Tierney, Marquinhos and Vieira, and there was few chances beyond that which were worthy of noting.
There was a late foul in and around the box at the other end in the dying minutes however, but thankfully the linesman had deemed it to be offside and we held on for the victory.
Patrick
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