Arsenal left Sporting CP behind and booked a spot in the Champions League semi-finals with a 1-0 aggregate win.
It wasn’t pretty or fun, but it got the job done. The Gunners have made the final four in back-to-back UCL campaigns for the first time ever.
The 1-0 win from the first leg did all of the work, with the reverse fixture ending in a goalless draw. While they couldn’t create much danger at the Emirates, neither could the Portuguese side.
By no means did Mikel Arteta give up on the game and defend for 90 minutes. In fact, his men dominated possession in the attacking half in the first 45 and pressed high up the pitch and countered in the final 45.
What were the main tactical talking points in Arsenal 0-0 Sporting?
Near-perfect defensive performance
It would have been a perfect defensive display had David Raya and especially William Saliba not given away decent opportunities completely unforced. Arsenal, who so rarely shoot themselves in the foot, looked uncharacteristically shaky tonight in-possession near their own goal.
Elsewhere, they managed to limit Sporting in areas they were threatening in the first leg. Manager Rui Borges tried to lean on his right side again to start the match, but didn’t have the switch of play to left-back Maxi Araujo available as he had in Lisbon. Cristhian Mosquera was mostly solid down that side.
He inverted things in the second half looking for the opposite dynamic, but Piero Hincapie had a great display and kept Geny Catamo quiet. Geovany Quenda replaced him but played even more poorly.
Overall, the Lions created just 0.31 Expected Goals, the lowest of any Arsenal opponent in their current Champions League campaign.
Their closets chance was a Catamo shot that grazed the bar worth just 0.03 xG in the end of the first half. And the best opportunity, based on the same metric, was a right-footed effort by left-back Araujo just after the break (0.06 xG).
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Additionally, the only team to attempt fewer shots against the Gunners in the UCL this season was Kairat (four in the league phase).
Space for Eze
As Squawka mentioned last week, Arsenal missed Eberechi Eze dearly in the first leg. This time, however, they had him available and he delivered, given what the team created.
- READ MORE: Sporting CP vs Arsenal stats and analysis: How second-half substitutes saved Gunners in Lisbon
Granted, Sporting’s defensive system favoured Eze’s play at the Emirates. They pressed man-to-man but this time without a -1 disadvantage, like in the reverse fixture. Arteta cleverly set his build-ups in a 4+2 (or 2+4, regardless) while Borges countered with his six front-men of his 4-4-2 out of possession.
It meant that holding midfielders Morten Hjulmand and Hidemasa Morita matched up against Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi. This left Eze with acres of space between the lines with centre-backs Ousmane Diomande and Goncalo Inacio hesitant to chase him and dismantle their defensive shape.
This specific dilemma actually made more sense for the striker to be Kai Havertz than Viktor Gyokeres, just by their natures. It didn’t help how poor the Swede looked tonight. While in the first leg he fell victim of Arsenal’s lack of creativity, tonight he put in a bad performance.
The No.14 was actually a big reason why most of the danger Eze tried to generate didn’t turn into anything concrete.
Eze played well both in his own usual way, but also doing a few of the things that Martin Odegaard usually does. Dropping deep to help in build-up and initiate plays and also distributing the ball further up the pitch.
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His right-sided combinations with Noni Madueke gave the Gunners a lot of energy to start the game, but faded as the match went on. And though Madueke did get the best of Araujo a few times tonight, it wasn’t in the same rate from the first leg.
High turnovers
Especially early on, Arsenal had a lot of success recovering possessions near Sporting’s goal. In fact, the very first play of the game was a high turnover that the Gunners forced just 10 seconds in. Before the clock completed a full 60-second turn, they even got another one.
The Lions’ struggles to play out from the back with short passes were clear in the first leg, but reached a whole new level this Wednesday.
Two of Arsenal’s top-four tallies of high turnovers in a single UCL game this campaign have been the first (14) and second (17) legs against Sporting. They recorded 21 vs Kairat and 16 vs Atletico Madrid of all teams, their semi-final opponents coming up.
Sporting defenders and midfielders gave Eze a run for his money in terms of creating opportunities for Arsenal. They had a lot of work done for them, sometimes with no effort whatsoever. But the Gunners’ pressing was so effective that it remained their best chance of defending until the very end.
That’s why we saw them push their lines high up the pitch and take six or more players to trap the Lions inside their own third during goal kicks in stoppage time.
Now, a semi-final between Arsenal and Atlético Madrid awaits. Ironically, Mikel Arteta has been far more of a risk-averse and conservative manager than Diego Simeone this season – though the Argentine could cook up something special from his old playbook for this tie. Should be fun.