Arsenal 1-0 Porto (Agg 1-1 - 4-2 on pels) - Player rating and Match reaction

[HCZ_Reborn]

Raya 8 - Have to say probably his best game for Arsenal, made smart saves during open play and made two good stops in the shootout, including fucking around with the heads of the Porto penalty takers


White 7 - Less effective going forward than he was against Brentford but along with the other defenders tidy and denying them space


Saliba 6.5 - Another solid performance, struggled with Evanilson a bit at first but grew into the game


Gabriel 7 - Same as Saliba, solid


Kiwior 7.5 - Good defending one on one


Jorginho 6 - One of our best passers, but there was very little space to exploit and doesn’t generally make his mark in these kind of physical games


Rice 7 - Didn’t have the space to influence things going forward but did a tidy job defensively. Possibly should have been subbed in extra time as clearly tiring


Odegaard 8 - Created the goal for Trossard and produced an excellent finish for goal that was ruled out.


Saka 6 - Didn’t really ever beat his full back, given his excellent performances of late…a bit muted


Trossard 7 - Good clinical finishing but his overall influence on the game barring the goal was minimal


Havertz 7 - Did well holding the ball up, I think on balance can’t have too many complaints about disallowed goal for his pulling Pepe back but coped well with deep defending and physicality



Subs


Jesus 7 - Still not fully fit, but was equally unlucky not to score just after coming on


Nketiah 6 - Peripheral


Zinchenko 5.5 - Lack of defensive discipline



Wasn’t a great performance, struggled to create much….and taken to the wire by a side that I think is inferior to us in almost every aspect. Whilst I do think we still lack that game plan against shit house teams to deal with them more efficiently, we showed grit and determination if not as much attacking fluency as we’d like to see.
Although their time wasting, their diving etc is frustrating and referees do need to come down harder on it…I think we took the lesson from the first leg…less sloppiness overall even if it did mean we approached the game with a bit more caution.

But you’re not going to play well every week, doesn’t matter who you are. Brentford and Porto were tough games which required us to show some mettle and we did that. I think we’ve come through these games and we take confidence and momentum into the tests to come