Arsenal beat Real Madrid in the Champions League (vol 1, hopefully)

Morning all.

Let’s start with last night’s brilliant Arsenal performance against Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-final. Down 2-0 from the first leg – in part because of the horrendous conditions that game was played in – a proper pitch became a level playing field (if that makes sense), and Renee Slegers’ team dominated from start to finish – read the match report and see the goals here.

That said, it was 0-0 at half-time, the end product wasn’t quite there but whatever the manager said at the break worked. Almost straight after the restart, Alessia Russo tucked home really well at the back post after a great ball from Chloe Kelly, and the on-loan Man City woman was provider for the second too. Another excellent cross from the right, this time Mariona Caldentey timed her run and headed home. Perhaps the keeper should have done better, but that’s true of the one of the goals we conceded in the first leg so it evened itself out.

Russo got the third, reacting first and sweeping home after a Katie McCabe free kick was headed into the mixer, and the only real shame on the night is that she didn’t end up with a hat-trick. She had two goals disallowed by the slimmest of margins, but along with Chloe Kelly and her superb passing range, she was real driver of this performance with her movement and finishing. An almost complete centre-forward performance.

But, I guess that’s a small complaint on a great night, and on the basis of the overall performance there’s no question Arsenal deserved to go through. 18 shots (and stats heads can correct me if I’m wrong but the offside ‘goals’ don’t count in that), 66% possession, and the game was almost entirely played in the Real Madrid half. They barely got over the halfway line all night, and had we scored 5 or 6 last night, they could have had no complaints.

Afterwards, Renee Slegers said of overturning that two goal deficit:

It’s just a credit to everyone, I think, staff and players. We’ve worked incredibly hard to prepare this game. But then when the moment is there, because you can prepare everything and in theory, you have all your plans, and you know what you’re gonna do, but then to actually do it and execute it in this moment where you are under so much pressure, it’s so strong of the girls. So it’s definitely something that we take with us so that’s very positive feedback that in these times and in these moments, we can perform.

So, the reward is a semi-final against Lyon, who battered Bayern Munich 4-1 last night to win 6-1 on aggregate over the course of the two legs. A tough task, but then you’d expect it to be when you get to this stage of the Champions League. Arsenal are at home first, so hopefully we can make this one a big, big night – so keep an eye out for tickets for what should be a great occasion.

Tim and Jason put together a fun match day vlog too, which you can see here:

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Meanwhile, there are whispers of Bukayo Saka being back in the squad for our next game, Tuesday’s home encounter with Fulham in the Premier League. Obviously we’ll wait for official confirmation – if we even get that from Mikel Arteta when he meets the press on Monday. We might get a ‘He has a chance, but we’ll assess him after today’s training and make a decision’, but no more than that!

Either way, it’s obviously very good news. I wouldn’t expect him to start, but the games against Fulham and Everton – all going well – should be about getting some minutes into him with Real Madrid on the horizon. Even with a couple of cameo appearances in those games, I’d be really, really cautious about starting him in a Champions League quarter-final of that intensity, but if he can play some part in the first leg, we can then make a judgement as to the game out in Madrid.

No doubt over the next few days, as the players come back from their Interlull duties (one or two of them on very light detail I’d imagine), the plans for Fulham will ramp up. The injury to Saka was, when you look back at it, a crack to the foundations that we simply could not sustain. Not after the struggles to overcome Martin Odegaard’s absence, and certainly not when compounded by those injuries to Gabriel Jesus, Kai Havertz and – albeit relatively temporarily – Gabriel Martinelli.

The best-case scenario, perhaps even a fairytale scenario, is that his return sparks a run in the final weeks of the season which propels us towards European success. A long-shot, of course, and it’s not to burden him with too much responsibility, but in a season when so much has gone wrong for us, it’s not unreasonable to allow yourself to dream just a little and hope the universe gives us a bit back. My feet remain firmly on the ground, but I don’t mind my head being in the clouds from time to time!

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll have an Arsecast for you today at some point, and if you’d like something else to listen to in the meantime, we’ve got an episode of Waffle for you over on Patreon.

For now, have a good one.