Champions League Briefing: Arsenal's statement win – and why so many thrashings?

By / / Sports / 9 minutes of reading


If you like your European midweek football this is the week for you, with 54 Champions League, Europa League and Conference League matches being crammed into three nights.

The Champions League kicked things off with some of the competition’s favourites beginning to bare their teeth.

None of Arsenal, Manchester City or Barcelona managed to win on Matchday 1. That all changed today, but there were plenty of other sides vying for headlines with last season’s finalists Borussia Dortmund and surprise package Brest both registering big victories.

Before we run through the big talking points from Tuesday’s action, here’s how the expanded group phase table looks. And a quick reminder of the new format: the top eight sides will qualify automatically for the round of 16. Teams finishing from 9th to 24th will compete in a two-legged knock-out phase play-off, with the winner of each match-up advancing to the last 16. Teams that finish 25th or lower will be eliminated.

CLStandings After1 Oct

Arsenal finally get a big scalp

It’s been some time since Arsenal beat one of European football’s big boys in the Champions League.

You have to go back to 2015 and a 2-0 victory over Bayern Munich in the group stages (goals from Olivier Giroud and Mesut Ozil) for an Arsenal victory over one the continent’s true elite.

Paris Saint-Germain might be behind Arsenal in terms of their redevelopment project under Luis Enrique and the post Kylian Mbappe era, but this 2-0 win at the Emirates still felt like a bit of a statement victory for Mikel Arteta’s side.

They did so despite having fewer shots (6-10) and less of the ball (35 per cent-65 per cent) against the French visitors, who hit the woodwork through Nuno Mendes and Joao Neves and whose impressive away support was vociferous all night long.

Arsenal took the lead when Kai Havertz, who had an excellent game up front, beat Gianluigi Donnarumma to Leandro Trossard’s teasing inswinging cross to score at The Emirates for the sixth consecutive match.

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By half-time it was 2-0 when Bukayo Saka’s free-kick from out wide was missed by three Arsenal players, but also by the hapless Donnarumma, who endured a difficult night.

PSG have now gone four Champions League games without one of their players scoring a goal. As for Arsenal, their staunch defensive record continues with another Champions League clean sheet and four points from two tough opening matches, after the 0-0 draw at Atalanta.

For a club that qualified for the Champions League for 19 years in a row between 1998 and 2017, Arsenal had been away for too long.

But after reaching the quarter-finals last season, and losing to Bayern, this more mature Arsenal are undoubtedly among the favourites to win the tournament this season.

Lewandowski the legend

When you put together an all-time Champions League XI, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi walk into the side — and Robert Lewandowski surely does too?

In terms of the forward positions you’ll probably also think of the likes of Karim Benzema, Raul, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Andriy Shevchenko as Champions League greats, but Lewandowski has scored more than all of them.

In fact, after netting twice on Tuesday night for Barcelona in their 5-0 hammering of Young Boys, Lewandowski achieved another personal milestone in his incredible career. He reached 10 goals in the competition for Barca, the third club he has reached double figures for in the Champions League (69 for Bayern Munich and 17 for Borussia Dortmund).

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Lewandowski, aged 36 and who has scored nine goals in all competitions this season already, is only the second player to manage this feat, after Ronaldo who achieved the same with Real Madrid, Juventus and Manchester United.

Barcelona’s average age was 21 and they had eight teenagers in the squad, but the old boy’s two goals, both tap-ins inside the six-yard box, showcased his familiar predatory instincts on what was a very comfortable night for Barcelona, one that they needed after losing to Monaco on Matchday 1.

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Raphinha, Inigo Martinez and an own goal from Mohamed Camara rounded off the scoring for Barcelona, who also welcomed back Frenkie de Jong from injury for a first appearance since April.

Incidentally last year’s Swiss champions Young Boys, who lost 4-0 to Aston Villa last time out, could barely have had a worse start to the season – they’re bottom of the 36-team Champions League group and second bottom in the Swiss Super League.

Adeyemi overwhelms Celtic

Both hat-tricks in this year’s group stage so far have both been scored in Germany, with Karim Adeyemi following Harry Kane’s four-goal salvo for Bayern on Matchday 1 with a hat-trick for Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday night.

Dortmund couldn’t quite match Bayern’s 9-2 shellacking of Dinamo Zagreb from last month, but they came pretty close with a 7-1 humiliation of Celtic.

Dortmund vs Celtic

German international forward Adeyemi only scored five times in 34 appearances in all competitions last season, but he found the net three times in 31 minutes in the first half as Dortmund ripped Celtic’s atrocious defence to shreds.

After an early Emre Can penalty and an almost instant equaliser from Celtic’s in-form Japanese winger Daizen Maeda, 22-year-old Adeyemi scored his first after 11 minutes, then crashed a ferocious drive which beat Kasper Schmeichel at his near post to make it 3-1, before completing his hat-trick on 42 minutes with a tidy low shot past Schmeichel.

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The perfect night? Well, not quite. On 48 minutes his evening ended prematurely when he limped off the field with a hamstring injury, leaving Serhou Guirassy (with his second goal) and Felix Nmecha to round off the scoring.

It was a bonkers game. There were 15 shots on target from both teams (13 from Dortmund, two from Celtic) and eight goals were scored.

But as impressive as Adeyemi and Dortmund were, Celtic were pretty hideous. In conceding five before half-time, they became the first British team to concede five goals in the first half of a game in major European competition since – and this will be on the tip of your tongue – Cwmbran Town vs Progresul Bucharest in the 1997-98 UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup.

It was also, incredibly, their 31st defeat from 37 Champions League group stage away games. And they have conceded precisely 100 goals in those 37 games. Ouch.

After beating Slovan Bratislava 5-1 at home on Matchday 1, Brendan Rodgers’ team are the Jekyll and Hyde of this year’s Champions League.

Whatever next? Well, Atalanta away.

Quality gulf yawns wide

The Dortmund 7-1 and Barcelona 5-0 victories continue a trend in the new version of the Champions League – thrashings.

Also on Tuesday night, Manchester City sauntered past Slovan Bratislava 4-0, Inter Milan brushed aside Red Star Belgrade at San Siro by the same scoreline, while French side Brest also won 4-0 away at Red Bull Salzburg.

For City, the outstanding Jeremy Doku, playing on the right of the forward line, helped set up their first two goals and was one of three players to hit the woodwork as the visitors peppered their hosts with 28 shots. Ilkay Gundogan, Phil Foden, Erling Haaland and a first Champions League goal for James McAtee saw City get their first win of this year’s competition.

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After a 9-2, a 5-1 and another 4-0 on Matchday 1, and with 27 games so played so far, this is proving to be the most goal-heavy Champions League since 2004-05, with 3.3 goals per game.

It also the most one-sided Champions League in that period — again, very early days — with an average margin of victory of 2.86 goals.

What could be behind the numbers? A bit more freedom and a handbrake off for the big boys owing to the chances of them failing to qualify for at least the knockout play-off round being slim, yes, but also opening up the competition to more teams like may have diluted the quality.

Brest’s fairytale continues

Then again, a team like Brest have come into the competition for the first time ever and made this Champions League lark look pretty easy.

Their 4-0 victory in Austria at Red Bull Salzburg was arguably the most impressive win of Matchday 2.

Brest beat Sturm Graz on Matchday 1 and they kept up an unlikely 100 per cent record with Senegalese forward Abdallah Sima, on loan from Brighton, scoring twice.

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Brest, managed by one-time Sunderland midfielder Eric Roy, are also playing in Europe for the first time in the club’s history, let alone the Champions League, a reward for finishing third in Ligue 1 last season only five years after winning promotion from Ligue 2.

And they’re not even playing at their own stadium.

They lost a number of key players in the summer and can’t even play Champions League games at their own home, with the 15,000 capacity Stade Francis-Le Ble not up to Champions League standards (they’re hosting matches at Guingamp’s Stade du Roudourou instead).

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Brest celebrate their fine win in Salzburg (Kerstin Joensson/AFP)

Les Pirates will have been aiming for, what, eight to 10 points to have a chance of reaching the play-off round? Well they have six already with six matches still to play, more than Manchester City, Arsenal, Barcelona and PSG have from their opening two games.

Meanwhile the team they thrashed, Red Bull Salzburg managed by former Liverpool assistant manager Pep Lijnders, are enduring a nightmare start to the group stage having lost 3-0 at Sparta Prague on Matchday 1.

Who’d be a manager, eh?

Tuesday’s results

  • Red Bull Salzburg 0 Brest 4
  • Stuttgart 1 Sparta Prague 1
  • Arsenal 2 PSG 0
  • Barcelona 5 Young Boys 0
  • Bayer Leverkusen 1 AC Milan 0
  • Borussia Dortmund 7 Celtic 1
  • Inter Milan 4 Red Star Belgrade 0
  • PSV 1 Sporting 1
  • Slovan Bratislava 0 Manchester City 4

What’s next?

The remaining nine fixtures for Matchday 2 of the eight-round group stage take place on Wednesday.

  • Girona vs Feyenoord (5.45pm BST/12.45pm ET)
  • Shakhtar Donetsk vs Atalanta (5.45pm BST/12.45pm ET)
  • Aston Villa vs Bayern Munich (8pm BST/3pm ET)
  • Benfica vs Atletico Madrid (8pm BST/3pm ET)
  • Dinamo Zagreb vs Monaco (8pm BST/3pm ET)
  • Lille vs Real Madrid (8pm BST/3pm ET)
  • Liverpool vs Bologna (8pm BST/3pm ET)
  • RB Leipzig vs Juventus (8pm BST/3pm ET)
  • Sturm Graz vs Club Bruges (8pm BST/3pm ET)

(Photos: Getty Images)





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About The Author

Avatar of Christi Melton
Christi Melton is a writer from The Newspring. She writes about lifestyle, books, sports, education and technology. Her hobbies include reading and playing tennis.

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