Arsenal vs FC Porto match report
Mikel Arteta and his Arsenal squad travelled to Estadio do Dragao in Portugal last night to face off against FC Porto in a match where we walked away bitterly disappointed when a wonder goal went into the net in the dying minutes of added time. A hard loss for Arteta and his squad and leaves us with plenty to do in the second game at The Emirates in 3 weeks’ time. Here’s a run down of everything that happened.
Arsenal started the game from the get-go looking a bit shaky and didn’t come looking ready to go like we’ve got so used to seeing from this squad recently. The ball kept going from end to end, but Arsenal couldn’t seem to break Porto down and although we had a lot of the ball, we just weren’t creating chances for ourselves. Declan Rice was booked after a minute of play after some miscommunication with Saka and was set to play the game out on an early yellow card.
Porto were playing to their strengths and were dominating the midfield, putting in tough challenges and were playing a very physical game, which we all should have expected from the Portuguese side. Porto came incredibly close to scoring after 20 minutes when a shot was smashed towards goal by Galeno but hit the left side of the post, then ricocheted back towards him, but he sent the shot just wide from about 5 yards out, with Arsenal lucky to not be behind.
Arsenal were getting plenty of corners in the first half but just couldn’t produce any strong chances, with headers going wide of the mark from both Havertz and Gabriel and both teams walked down the tunnel with scores level at half time.
The second half wasn’t much better for Arsenal with Porto defending well and playing well through the centre of the pitch. Trossard did have a chance just before the 60-minute mark but sent the ball flying over the goal. Both sides began to get a bit more physical, and the ref began to hand out yellow cards left, right and centre.
Arteta made a change in the 74th minute and brough Jorginho on for Trossard, pushing Havertz up to centre forward and giving our midfield a bit more stability. Arsenal won a free kick a few minutes into extra time and Gabriel managed to get a head to the ball but it went over the bar.
In the 4th minute of extra time, disaster struck when we gave away our possession and Porto looked to pounce with Galeno firing a rocket towards goal from outside of the box, looping over the head of Raya and going into the top corner of the net to make it 1-0 and win the game for the Portuguese club and leaving Arsenal wondering where it all went wrong.
A tough loss but we look onto the next game on home turf where hopefully we can get back to our best.
What did you think of the game, Gooners?
Daisy Mae
Do you want to read our whole collection of history articles? Check out our Just Arsenal History section
CALLING ALL ARSENAL FANS! Anyone who would like to contribute an Article or Video opinion piece on JustArsenal, please contact us through this link…
