As was hoped, Mikel Arteta made 7 changes to his starting line up as the Gunners travelled to St Gallen to face FC Zurich in our opening Europa League game.
Zurich have had an awful start to their season in Switzerland and are yet to win a game, and to be honest they hardly even got a glipmpse of the ball in the first half as our young Gunners ran rings around them.
When Marquinhos put us 1-0 up after just 16 minutes it looked like a veritable rout was on the cards, and it was a great moment for the young Brazilian and he was extremely emotional in the celebrations on his first ever senior game for the Gunners, and he was definitely a bright spark in the side. Hopefully he will be able to give Saka a break from the league fixtures now and again.
Fabio Vieira also made his first start, and looked very promising if a little rusty having ony recently recovered from injury.
We had two thirds of the possession and were totally in control until, in true Arsenal fashion, we gave our opponents a lifeline with Nketah gifting them a penalty just before half time. Considering we had 67% of the ball it was probably theirr very first attack lol, and the penalty was one of only two shots on target in the wholegame.
WE really should have battered them though but it was a bit of a relief, even if it seemed inevitable, when Nketiah made up for his mistake by grabbing the winner just after the hour mark.
With PSV and Bodo/Glimt playing out a 1-1 draw, this leaves us on top of the group and hopefully we will stay there al the way.
Their was a group silent show of respect for the Queen before the start of the seond half and it would appear that all after-match press conferences were called off as well. We will probably have all this weekends games called off as well, but we’ll have to wait and see on that….
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