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Boring, boring Arsenal? Not in carnival week in Eindhoven. Many a colourful disguise has been donned in this corner of the Netherlands in the last few days and Mikel Arteta’s roundheads took the guise of cavaliers for an evening of riotous, and at times ridiculous, fun. The team who couldn’t score became the first in Champions League history to score seven goals in an away knockout match.
After two goals in four games, Arsenal had two in three minutes in the first half, a further two in three at the start of the second. They had five within 50 minutes, a fifth straight Champions League win booked and a date in Madrid in their diaries, whether to face Real or Atletico. No other visitor to PSV Eindhoven in Europe had scored more than four goals. Arsenal got seven and had two more disallowed. All, of course, without a specialist striker, though each of Arteta’s front three struck, a midfielder got a brace and full-backs bookended the scoring.
With Declan Rice dominant and Ethan Nwaneri precocious, PSV proved ideal opponents, not least for the goal-shy duo of Martin Odegaard and Leandro Trossard, who each found the net, while the stand-in striker Mikel Merino scored for the third time in four games with calm assurance. Freed from their faltering pursuit of Liverpool, Arsenal set about enjoying themselves.
There was much to relish. Particularly a symbolic second goal: made by an 18-year-old, for a 17-year-old, the first time two teenagers ever combined for a Champions League goal for an English club. Myles Lewis-Skelly and Nwaneri represent the success of the Hale End academy and the hopes for the future. Nwaneri became the third youngest scorer in the Champions League’s knockout stages, after Bojan Krkic and Jude Bellingham. Odegaard, with two goals and two assists, was the best player on the pitch though Rice was also excellent: finding the net when offside, setting up the crucial opener, purposeful and classy.
Perhaps the tone was set, however, by Peter Bosz’s entertainers, careering through games with no conception of how to keep a clean sheet, undermined by failings in both boxes but showing an ability to create, even if that sometimes merely meant trouble for themselves. Bosz had insisted PSV wouldn’t change. He may wish they had. They have now conceded 36 goals in 15 games since Christmas. Their manager spent much of the match shaking his head in disbelief. Juventus may have been doing likewise, considering they were knocked out by PSV in the previous round.
Arsenal’s imperfections added to the entertainment. Thomas Partey conceded a penalty in utterly needless fashion, blocking off Luuk de Jong with an elbow, seeing Noa Lang convert the spot kick. David Raya almost gifted PSV an opener, affording Ismael Saibari an open goal, but he hit the bar. Lewis-Skelly nearly afforded them a man advantage.
He risked a third red card in seven games, chopping down Richard Ledezma a couple of minutes after being booked. This time his early departure was by managerial choice. For the second game in a row, Arteta substituted a left-back to stop him getting sent off. This, perhaps, is why Arsenal have so many left-backs.
But one of their right-backs set them on the way to victory. The opener stemmed from Trossard’s fine ball to Rice. He turned and chipped a cross to the far post where Jurrien Timber headed in, to the evident delight of a former Ajax player.
The second came courtesy of two players who weren’t born when Arsenal played in the 2006 Champions League final. Lewis-Skelly turned one way and the other and picked out Nwaneri, who lifted in a shot from eight yards. The third was a comedy of errors, PSV twice failing to clear as Timber bundled his way forwards, Ryan Flamingo looking more like a dying swan as he fell over and Merino curling in a low shot.
The turning point may have come three minutes before the deadlock was broken, Saibari striking the woodwork when he should have scored. Lang did reduce the deficit just before the interval. Then it grew again.
Whatever the contents of Bosz’s half-time team talk, it backfired. Arsenal returned with an air of ruthlessness. Strangers to the scoresheet sensed an opportunity. After a mere two goals in his previous 20 appearances, Odegaard slotted in after Walter Benitez pushed Nwaneri’s cross out to him. After one in his last 21, Trossard exchanged passes with Lewis-Skelly’s replacement Riccardo Calafiori – more a two-two than a one-two – and, with Ledezma declining to track him dinked a shot over Benitez. Odegaard’s second came courtesy of a bizarre fumble by Benitez, getting first his footwork and then his handling wrong.
Calafiori completed the scoring with the finish of a forward, angled in perfectly from a rampant Odegaard’s defence-splitting pass. After the drought, the flood for Arsenal.
