This was some response to charges of being goal shy. Arsenal knew they needed to discover a cutting edge abroad and duly located it at the home of the Champions League’s form team. Their best European away performance of the past half-decade was beautifully timed, furthering the sense that they are back to their old selves and making swift passage to the knockout stage look significantly more realistic.
When Leandro Trossard completed the scoring it felt a trick of the mind that Sporting had blown Manchester City away on the same pitch this month. It was hardly an obvious venue for Arsenal to cut loose and score five times on the continent for the first time since October 2008. Beyond a 15-minute spell after the interval, when Gonçalo Inácio put a dent in their three-goal lead and the home side briefly looked capable of causing serious alarm, they were in complete command and superior in every department.
Arsenal’s previous four trips in this competition had each yielded a blank. This time the rewards were bountiful and, when it was put to Mikel Arteta that it was the best display on foreign soil of his tenure the answer was unequivocal. “For sure,” he said. “Especially against the opponent we played in their home. They’ve been in top form, they’ve been better than everyone they’ve played here. To play to that level, with the fluidity that we’ve done today, I’m very pleased.”
They began at a rattling tempo and, right up to the Gabriel Magalhães header that flew past Franco Israel in the first half’s final action, barely let up. It has become a truism that Martin Ødegaard’s prompting raises the levels of everyone around him but he was magnificent here, picking holes through Sporting for fun and setting a relentless tone in waving his teammates forward when play restarted following Gabriel Martinelli’s opener.
Ødegaard had, naturally, been involved in the move for that goal although it owed most to a gorgeously curved low cross from Jurriën Timber. Kai Havertz was unable to reach the ball but Martinelli, hovering behind him, could not miss and Arsenal’s early intent had been rewarded. Sporting were grievously open, the left side of their defence a clear weakness, and it never appeared likely that the damage to their pre-match buoyancy would be limited.
They were exposed again in the 22nd minute by a clipped pass over the top from Thomas Partey that sent Bukayo Saka haring beyond Maximiliano Araújo. When Israel came out to meet him, Saka showed presence of mind to nudge the ball left and let Havertz reap the benefits.
“We were so effective and efficient when we started to attack the opposition goal,” Arteta said. They had been threatening a third when, after a rare moment of Sporting cohesion led to Raya tipping over from Geovany Quenda, a deep left-sided corner from Declan Rice was met by the leaping Gabriel and the outcome was in effect settled.
The danger for Arsenal, as Arteta acknowledged, tends to come when they try to manage a game rather than keep their foot on the gas. “We’re not very good at that,” he admitted. Almost immediately after the break Inácio escaped Riccardo Calafiori and met a corner at the near post, volleying past Raya. Sporting had seen City off at a similar time of the game and, for a while, their followers audibly sensed a similar level of heroism.
Arsenal were rocking when Ødegaard, yet again seizing the initiative, passed through Inácio as if the defender were a hologram. Ousmane Diomande clipped him from behind as he fed Saka; it was idiotic work from Sporting and a simple call for the referee, Szymon Marciniak, to award a penalty. Saka put it away and Arteta’s players could enjoy themselves once again.
Trossard added gloss when nodding in after Israel had parried from another substitute, Mikel Merino. There was a late runout for Ethan Nwaneri in the closing stages and no final say for Sporting, although Viktor Gyökeres rattled the woodwork towards the end. While the vaunted Swede had perked up during his side’s recovery, his headline piece of work until then had been a wild free-kick from inside the D; Gabriel and William Saliba, who was making his 100th appearance for Arsenal, handled his rumbustious form expertly.
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The only real blot was a late injury to Gabriel, who appeared to have aggravated a hamstring. “He was feeling some discomfort,” Arteta said.
But the manager’s ease with everything else he had seen was clear. He had maintained that Arsenal’s showing in their narrow defeat at Inter was a pointer to better things and that view was borne out spectacularly here. “I knew that in that pathway good things were going to happen in Europe,” he said. The enticing question, now, is how far that can take them.
