Arsenal drew 0-0 in a very frustrating Thursday night clash with Sporting CP, which nonetheless left the Gunners in an extremely strong position to top the group.
A win would’ve wrapped Arsenal’s group up early, but a draw leaves Unai Emery’s side needing one win from the final two games to ensure finishing top. Perhaps not even that, if results go their way in the other games.
As a result, a draw wasn’t a particularly good result for Sporting either, if they had any ambition to top the group. It seems they’re happy to meander to second place though, as they didn’t even make any real attempts to score a goal.
It was up to Arsenal to take the game to their opponents, but the Gunners keenly felt the absence of their first-choice full-backs and the creativity in midfield provided by Mesut Özil, Granit Xhaka and Lucas Torreira. Those filling in on Thursday failed to make much happen.
Let’s have a look at our individual ratings for the match.
Goalkeeper and Defence
Petr Cech 7
Cech didn’t have a single save to make, nor a single high claim. At one point he had to come off his line and sweep up a through ball, which he did pretty well. His passing was also very solid.
Stephan Lichtsteiner 5.5
Lichtsteiner offers disappointingly little going forward in these sorts of games. When opponents sit back, a key part of Arsenal’s attack is getting the full-backs up and putting in crosses and cutbacks, but Lichtsteiner didn’t create a single chance before his eventual forced substitution through injury. Hopefully, that injury is nothing too serious.
Sokratis Papastathopoulos 7
Like Cech, Sokratis just had so little to do that it’s hard to give him a proper rating. He did make a couple of nice tackles, and his passing was very accurate. So it should’ve been, considering no Sporting player ever really made an attempt to close Arsenal down.
Rob Holding 7
Pretty much the same story as Sokratis, except Holding didn’t have to make any tackles at all, and he did have to win a few more aerial duels. Excluding Ramsey, Holding and Sokratis spent more time on the ball than any other player on the pitch, which sums up the game quite nicely.
Carl Jenkinson 6
Jenkinson’s mishit shot and one particularly poor cross in the first half will get picked on endlessly by those on social media, but overall he didn’t have a terrible game.
He dealt well with any counter-attacking threat, but overall he looked like exactly what he was: A fringe player on the wrong side of the pitch trying his best to hold things together. He did create one chance, which is more than you can say for most of the team.
Midfield
Aaron Ramsey 6
This is the kind of game Ramsey needs to be bossing, especially from the position he’s supposed to be best in. From that point of view, it was disappointing to see him offer so little, and his attempted flicks towards the end of the game were just stupid.
As mentioned earlier, the Welshman spent more time on the ball than anyone else, making over 100 passes. All that to create just one chance, the same as Jenkinson.
Matteo Guendouzi 6
Guendouzi was caught on the ball a little too often, and couldn’t affect the game as positively as he did in the away fixture. Nonetheless, he made a couple of good tackles and his passing was still better than most of the midfielders and forwards.
Emile Smith Rowe 7
Smith Rowe had a solid game, making a lot of positive runs into the channels and looking to take players on when possible. He had a couple of chances as well, but couldn’t find the target on this occasion.
Forwards
Alex Iwobi 7
Iwobi led the match in chance creation, making three for his teammates. The only shot he took on himself flew high and wide, and the 22-year-old’s dribbling wasn’t quite as effective as it generally has been this season. Nonetheless, far from the worst performance on the night.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan 6
The stats will tell you that Mkhitaryan created a couple of chances, but one of those was from a corner, so really he wasn’t much better than the rest of the team. The Armenian midfielder needed to do more, though in his defence Lichtsteiner offered very little to work with.
Danny Welbeck 7.5
Frustratingly, Welbeck was actually looking pretty good before his injury. He went as close to scoring as Arsenal came all night, and didn’t misplace a pass in the opening 29 minutes. Then came the horror injury, and we wish him all the best with the upcoming scans and his recovery.
Substitutes
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang 6.5
Just as in last week’s match against Blackpool, Aubameyang’s best moment came in getting an opponent sent off for a cynical foul. He went close with one other chance but, like Ramsey, it was a bit disappointing not to see him do more in this sort of game. Part of that was definitely down to the service though.
Sead Kolasinac 7
Kolasinac came on and did pretty well, offering a bit of offensive presence and dealing with pretty much the only counter-attack that occurred while he was on the pitch.
Ainsley Maitland-Niles 6.5
Maitland-Niles wasn’t the player Unai Emery originally planned to bring on, but the injury to Lichtsteiner forced him into action. He looked lively and whipped a couple of crosses in, but couldn’t find a teammate with either. With the way the midfielders played, Ainsley could realistically hope for a chance in the middle for the next Europa League game.