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Key events
Half time: Arsenal 0-0 Lille
Arsenal have had two excellent chances, one created with a move down the right which ended with Guimaraes shooting wide, and one created with a move down the left which ended with Eze having a shot saved. They’ve been the better team, but Lille have been well organised and hard working, and goalless it remains.
45+1 mins: Save! Guimaraes’s deflected shot bamboozles Ozer, who can’t hold on to it and has to dive again to claw the ball off the toes of Gyokeres and out for a corner.
45 mins: … and his second attempt is cleared.
44 mins: Madueke takes the corner, which is headed behind for another corner.
43 mins: Madueke backheels into the path of the overlapping Timber, but he can’t pick out Gyokeres with his low cross, which is turned behind.
40 mins: Arsenal have both not really done very much, and done more than enough to be winning by now. They haven’t had any periods of sustained attacking, though, no time when a goal has seemed to be coming.
37 mins: What a chance that was! A brilliant pass from Guimaraes finds Timber, who pulls back to Eze, who really should be scoring. Instead he sidefoots low and down the centre of the goal and Ozer gets in the way, and to make matters worse the ball then rebounds to Gyokeres, who’s offside.
35 mins: Madueke’s cross drops eventually off Goffi’s shoulder to Merino, who thumps a first-time shot over the bar.
32 mins: Lille appear to have succeeded in the first task of visiting teams, aka quietening the crowd.
29 mins: Arsenal nick the ball in midfield and pass it up to Merino, who turns backwards, the pace drains out of the move, and then he gives it away for good measure. A few seconds later he tried a bit too hard to make amends, brings down Ueda and earns the night’s first booking.
27 mins: A quarter of the way through the match and there has been one shot on target, that feeble Merino header.
24 mins: The VAR takes long enough to check the decision that you start to think that he might just conjure a reason to give it. But he doesn’t.
22 mins: Bentaleb’s shot deflects off a defender into Haraldsson and off him to Ueda, who turns it in. But the linesman’s flag is up!
22 mins: And another one! Timber is the provider again, this time his cross from the right looping onto the head of Merino, but there’s not a lot of pace on it, and Merino can’t generate much of his own, so it ends up being an easy save for Ozer.
20 mins: Chance! Arsenal work the ball well to get into the area, Timber pulls back to Guimaraes, and his first-time shot from eight yards or so zips wide!
19 mins: Madueke tricks himself into some space on the right (good), but then sends in a rubbish cross (bad).
17 mins: Raya collects a cross and then rolls it two-handed out to the edge of the area, where the closest player to the ball turns out to be Lille’s Ayase Ueda. Rice reacts quickly to this development, though, and in the time Ueda takes to spin to face goal, he sticks out a foot and pushes the ball away.
15 mins: Now Eze does get into the penalty area with the ball. He tees up Guimaraes, who takes a touch and then hits a shot into Bentaleb – there were four Lille players between him and goal, and he was always likely to hit one of them.
13 mins: For the second time Eze passes forwards to the underlapping Lewis-Skelly, who gives the ball away. Arsenal could really do with getting Lewis-Skelly feeding a more advanced Eze.
11 mins: Mukau tries to be a bit fancy in midfield, gives the ball away, and fouls Eze as he tries to win it back.
9 mins: Eze, on the left, gets past his man nicely but falls over just as he enters the penalty area. Probably a genuine fall rather than a dive – he didn’t even look at the referee in hope.
7 mins: A tasty cross from Arsenal’s right tests Ozer in the Lille goal, and he comes for it, flaps a bit, and just deflects it beyond his goal, where it falls to a defender.
6 mins: This time Madueke comes infield and finds a nice pass into the penalty area, but Guimaraes can’t take it in his stride, Lille pounce upon the ball and break fast and well, but without crafting a significant chance.
4 mins: Arsenal have the ball on the right. Madueke passes back to Rice, who gives it back to him, gets it back from him, gives it back to him, gets it back from him and gives it back to him. At which point Madueke slips, falls over, accidentally handles the ball and the referee gives a free-kick.
2 mins: Lille kick off, keep the ball for 45 seconds and then pass it back to their keeper, who biffs it left-footed down the flank into a quarter of the pitch with no Lille players in it at all.
1 min: Peeeeeep!
Right then. Hands shaken, coin tossed, pennants exchanged, huddles broken. It’s time.
The players are in the tunnel! Football is but a few minutes away now.
“With the Eurostar links close by both grounds is it time to call this the St Pancras-ico?” wonders Chris Walker. The Eurostarby, perhaps?
Most of Mikel Arteta’s pre-match chat with TNT Sports focuses on Ken Friar, Arsenal’s life president, whose death aged 92 was announced today. He was, Arteta says, “the soul of this football club. This stadium wouldn’t be built if it wasn’t for him. The legacy is immense.”
Lovely night for football, this. About 16C as I type, dipping very slightly perhaps to 15C by the final whistle. No risk of rain. That’s the Met Office’s predictions, not my own. From where I’m sitting, all I can say is that the night looks dark.
Olivier Giroud has a chat:
Definitely a special moment. This kind of warm welcome when I just got off the coach meant a lot to me. We will need to be really compact and try to catch them on the counter-attack. We need to close the gap between our lines, be compact and just try to be efficient up front. I just love the game and as long as my body still allows me a little nit I’m still going really strong. I just want to enjoy every single moment. This one is special and I just want to enjoy it.
Also happening tonight under the watchful eye of Guardian’s crack liveblogging squad: England play Greece in the second leg of their women’s World Cup qualifying play-off with Rob Smyth plugged in here:
While John Brewin is watching Atletico Madrid’s home game against Manchester United in the Champions League here:
The teams!
The teams have been named and here indeed are those names that have been named, with Arsenal making five changes and bringing 18-year-olds Malik Hashi and Ceadach O’Neill onto the bench, while Lille’s bench is where Olivier Giroud has ended up:
Arsenal: Raya, Timber, Konsa, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly, Guimaraes, Rice, Merino, Eze, Madueke, Gyokeres. Subs: Arrizabalaga, Meslier, White, Calafiori, Mosquera, Salmon, Odegaard, Hashi, Saka, Dowman, Havertz, O’Neill.
Lille: Ozer; Goffi, Ngoy, Alexsandro, Perraud; Mukau, Bentaleb, Andre; Bakwa, Ueda, Heraldsson. Subs: Gill, Sajous, Srdanović, Giroud, Sahraoui, Kjærgaard, Başar Önal, Nianzou, Verdonk, Cossier, Perrin, Diaoune.
Referee: Felix Zwayer (Germany).
Preamble
Hello world! Tonight we witness history being made. Lille have played 71 games in the Champions League and Arsenal 241, but this is the first time they have played each other. OK, it’s not the kind of history we’re likely to be telling our grandchildren about many years hence, but history it remains.
This meeting is particularly fortunate for Olivier Giroud – he called it “a blessing” when he spoke to the media yesterday – who returns to his former club for the first time since he left to join Chelsea in 2020, after six years, 180 games and 73 goals, having turned 40 a fortnight ago. “I had to leave in order to play at the 2018 World Cup,” he said yesterday. “I was really sad when I left the club but I had to make that choice, and it was one of the toughest ones in my career, but it was important and necessary for the rest of my career.” It also seems quite fortunate for Arsenal – Lille may be second in Ligue 1 with a record uncannily similar to Arsenal’s in the Premier League (same number games, same goal difference, Arsenal have one more win and one draw fewer) but they have lost 10 of their last 12 games against English teams, and all of their last seven in the Champions League.
Arsenal are without Piero Hincapié and Martín Zubimendi, both of whom they managed to injure themselves during a post-match training session after they beat Leeds on Saturday. To lose one might be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness. Here’s something from Ed Aarons on that and other news:
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