We all knew that Mikel Arteta would make lots of changes to Arsenal’s starting line-up in last night’s Europa League game in Lisbon, but I personally thought we had put out a pretty good side regardless of the six changes he made.
Although I was aware that Sporting were a very good side in Portugal and had not been beaten in their last eight matches, but it quickly became obvious that it was going to be an uncomfortable night for our defeanders.
Luckily William Saliba popped up in the Sporting 8 yard box to head us into the lead half-way through the first half, but Sporting were clearly not in the mood to just surrender to the League leaders, so it was little surprise when Inacio equalized 10 minutes later.
It was a fast moving encounter and the Portugese side were a lot quicker than I expected, and caused big problems from over the head balls that aught out the defenders.
The second half gave us more of the same and it was little surprise that Sportiing took the lead 10 minutes after the restart, but then Xhaka got an incredibly lucky deflection from outside the box to get us back to level pegging. Xhaka told Arsenal.com after the game: ““We spoke before the game that we have to be smart,”
“We knew that we had two games and at this level, in this competition, we have to be smart, because if you come open straight away you can lose 3-1 or 4-1 here and it’s much more difficult to overturn.
“I think that we can win and lose this game today as well, so I think the draw is OK for both sides, now let’s see what happens in the second game.”
Hopefully we will be a different kettle of fish at home, but there is always a risk if Arteta continues to make lots of changes in the line-up. I’m hoping to see a much more settled line-up at the Emirates, and with our intimidating home crowd, we should pull through…