bookd.
Napoli
0 - 1Champions League · 9 Sept 2026
Arsenal
tligoat
tligoat@tligoat
☆☆☆☆☆★★★★★1d ago

not the most vintage performance from the gunners but a solid one all together was always gonna be a difficult game away at napoli and facing a well organized block (which again we struggled with) declan rice and mikel merino for all their strengths are not compatible (at least for games like this) as a pivot pairing. we needed a linebreaker/someone to dictate play from deep and let ode get up higher and today showed that. gyok has yet to fully move me this season. thought he wasn’t as involved in play as i would have liked but good minutes to build sharpness second half subs completely changed the game. additions of tzolis, bruno, havertz definitely switched the gamestate. our combinations look very very fluid and we were able to play through the napoli press. think this is tzolis’ 3rd time assisting odegaard, 2 very smart players who are able to find each other consisrently. this game for me solidified that havertz is our starting striker. again, when we came on we looked much more fluid. unlucky offsides for the second though but i love how he just goes and roams around to get involved. really hope he stays fit odegaard what a player man, our brightest spark this whole game and very happy he came out with a goal. looking very much back to his old self and is elevating this whole arsenal team. biggest critique of ours is we have no “gamechangers” but i think we’ve always had one

Player of the match
Martin Ødegaard
Arsenal
3

Comments

rafadinho forlahm
rafadinho forlahm@rafadinhoforlahm1d ago

Watched the LFC game but shocked at how little Arteta changed. Klopp used to do that though, I guess the idea is to really get rhythm at the beginning of the season. How did Eze play LW? Allegri was always going to play a tough game after bottling the Inter result.

tligoat
tligoat@tligoat1d ago

@rafadinhoforlahm lefthand side was pretty stagnant without calafiori. hincapie just can’t hold a candle to him going forward and that’s alright. eze wasn’t bad, but just suffering from getting bogged down in the lowblock as the rest of our players and it seems like tzolis (being 2 footed) is better at beating his man breaking them down

rafadinho forlahm
rafadinho forlahm@rafadinhoforlahm1d ago

@tligoat I think you guys will be fine, I just thought Arteta would play Cala in Naples given he’s Italian and all, but he did play a lot against Chelsea. I would’ve thought Madueke would have gotten minutes starting at LW, but now that Tzolis has started well, maybe Noni has to get ready to learn Carabao cup minutes? It’s a good problem for you guys and Arteta to have, but he’ll need to really step up. A win is huge in Italy though, you guys will probably be in the top 8 now.

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