Ahead of the match between the two teams on Thursday, let’s take a look at some of the background between Arsenal and Red Star Belgrade.

Uefa.com put together a fact-file on the match, so we’re having a look at some of statistics around the fixture.

Olivier Giroud’s winner for the Gunners in Serbia gave Arsenal their first ever win against the side, as the two previous meetings ended without a victory for the North London club.

Red Star won their home match back in 1978/79, 1-0, and then cancelled out Alan Sunderland’s goal at Highbury to draw 1-1.

As it currently stands in the all-time record between the two sides, Arsenal have one win, one draw and one loss to Red Star, and Thursday’s match could be the decider, for now at least.

The only other time Arsenal faced Serbian opposition, they won 3-1 against Partizan. Which means that the recent match in Belgrade was also the first time the Gunners had ever kept a clean sheet in a game against a Serbian club.

Red Star have beaten an English club in England before, but only once in eight attempts, with a 2-1 victory over Liverpool in 1973.

It’s long road to London for Thursday’s match up, since the away side have to travel 1,700km to reach the Emirates. But they’ve also had to come a long way in the competition to make it to this stage, having entered the Europa League qualification stages in the very first round.

They had to play eight matches over the summer just to make it to the group stages.

Thursday won’t be the end of that journey, as Red Star sit level on points with BATE Borisov with three games to play.

However, it could be the last meaningful group stage game for the Gunners, as a win would see them top the group if FC Köln get anything out of their match at home to Borisov.

Let’s hope that’s the case, so Wenger’s side can relax a bit for the final games.