Arsenal had to fight hard for their 11th consecutive win on Thursday night, but they managed to grind out a 1-0 victory in the end.
In arguably the most difficult fixture of Arsenal’s Europa League group stage, they travelled to Lisbon to face Sporting at the Estádio José Alvalade. The hosts hadn’t lost at the stadium for over a year, and Arsenal weren’t at full strength, with injuries and two Premier League games in close proximity affecting the clash.
As a result, it wasn’t the best performance we’ve seen from the team this season, but they got the job done.
Let’s have a look at our individual player ratings.
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Danny Welbeck 8
Welbeck had to make do with some relatively poor service throughout most of the match and, eventually, he popped up with the winning goal nonetheless. The striker also had a goal rather harshly disallowed after the Sporting defender appeared to slip over.
It’s great to see that Welbeck continues to come up with goals and assists despite his limited starts this season. He should’ve scored another after impressive work from Guendouzi in the box though.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan 7
In my opinion, Mkhitaryan came in for way too much criticism from the Arsenal fans on Thursday. His job was made incredibly difficult by Lichtsteiner’s ineffective efforts to support him, meaning he often had to go it alone.
Only Ramsey created more chances than Mkhitaryan, and he had one of Arsenal’s best efforts of the match with a first-half free-kick. He was dispossessed once, but every Arsenal midfielder and forward who started the match was dispossessed once or more.
It wasn’t a great performance, as the Armenian international needed to make more of his chances to cross, but overall he did alright.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang 7.5
Surprisingly, Aubameyang couldn’t find the net despite having five chances to do so. He’ll be disappointed not to have put away a one-on-one with the Sporting keeper, but in truth, it was well saved. The striker may also have got a touch on the ball that led to Welbeck’s goal. Even if he didn’t, he did enough to wrong-foot the defender.
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