Despite not capitalising on chances and playing as fluidly as they did last week, Arsenal are through to the Europa League quarter-final after allowing Olympiacos to get a goal back in what was not the most impressive game from either side.
The Gunners seemed to comfortably allow Pedro Martins’ side to have plenty of the ball in both halves without any worries, which is something that didn’t work in their favour at times.
Both halves produced close chances from both sides, with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang missing what seemed to be easy goals, possibly missing the opportunity to grab a hat-trick and goalscorer Youssef El-Arabi also having a few attempts on goal.
Olympiacos came very close to opening the scoring from a goal kick, where the ball met El-Arabi who was one on one with Bernd Leno, but his effort was fantastically saved by the German shot-stopper.
The only goal of the game came early in the second half when Olympiacos were on the front foot after coming into the second half raring to go and proving like they wanted to push Arsenal out of the competition again.
El-Arabi was on target for the Greek side when Arsenal lost the ball and Olympiacos went on the counter-attack. Masourus’s assist allowed the Morrocan to find the back of the net and tighten the aggregate score of 3-1 to 3-2.
Arsenal made changes and bought on Thomas Partey, Martin Odegaard and Gabriel Martinelli towards the end of the second half and all three players made such a positive difference in attack, pushing further up in the final third and taking risks going forward.
It was a breath of fresh air seeing Martinelli given minutes in the game and his instant impact, including almost providing an assist for an Aubameyanmg goal, surely proves to Arteta that he needs to play him more.
The young Brazillian was fouled with 10 minutes to go by Ousseynou Ba, who’s challenge was presented with a yellow card, followed by a red following his frustrated reaction.
Despite having an advantage for the final 10 minutes, Arsenal could not find the back of the net and I think we can all agree that they have their impressive performance away in the first leg of this tie to thank for them progressing further in the competition.
As always, there are plenty of positives and negatives to take from the game, read mine below…
1. Aubameyang misses out on hattrick
Unfortunately, this game wasn’t the one for the Gabonese striker who had the opportunity to grab his second hattrick of the season, but his composure in front of goal just wasn’t right and nothing he did could find the back of the net.
Aubameyang’s first chance of the game came when he received the ball from Dani Ceballos and found himself in front of goal and in a perfect position to shoot. His effort was struck too high and over the bar.
He had another chance to score late on in the second half where he found himself in front of the Olympiacos defence. He carried the ball and possibly got too close to Sa as his effort was put wide instead of in the back of the net.
The Gabonese’s closest chance of the game started with substitute Martienlli bursting down the left before putting the ball into the box right in front of Aubameyang, who’d back-heel was parried away by Sar and then his close-range volley follow-up went over that bar.
Three of the striker’s four shots on goal were off target. Aubameyang has been on form recently, so let’s hope this performance doesn’t knock his confidence as the side progress forward and look ahead to their next fixtures.
Aubameyang has the ability to shoot, but sometimes he makes things more complicated than they should be and should perhaps focus on more on the positioning of the ball rather than how he wants to strike it.