Arsenal travelled to Eindhoven having failed to score in three of their last four games, with four of their main attackers injured. It made any high-scoring predictions seem fanciful, but as manager Mikel Arteta said in his post-match press conference, “That’s the beauty of football.”
The 7-1 win over PSV was the first time Arsenal had scored that many goals under Arteta. They also became the first team in the competition’s history to score seven in a knockout game away from home in what was a surprisingly historic night.
Defender Jurrien Timber had spoken pre-match about “changing the narrative” of recent weeks so it was fitting not just that he scored first, but also that Arsenal’s seven goals were shared by six players. These striker-less goals were not lucky either. They were well-worked, and the moves that led to them had an intent that was evident within minutes of the game kicking off.
In games Mikel Merino has started as a makeshift striker — against West Ham United at home and Nottingham Forest away — Arsenal had become easier to defend against. They had plenty of the ball but made few penetrating runs, allowing the opposition to sit back waiting for a chance to pounce. That is how they got caught by West Ham.
By contrast, the first 10 minutes at the Philips Stadion provided two moments when Arsenal posed more issues for their opponents despite having no natural striker. These came from Myles Lewis-Skelly and Declan Rice. The first was a dribble up towards the box by Arsenal’s academy graduate, and the second was an off-the-ball run by Rice that resulted in him scoring a goal that was ruled out for offside.
The standard had been set, and that pair continued to make inroads. An off-ball run into the box is how Rice was then found to clip a lovely left-footed cross to Timber for the opener, and how Lewis-Skelly was found in a similar position to deliver a low cross for Ethan Nwaneri just three minutes later. Those types of runs have been missing from Arsenal’s game of late, but will be essential if they are to build on the thrashing of PSV.
Arsenal’s third goal showed that PSV’s defence was not the most stern they will face, the Dutch side had conceded 29 goals in 2025 before facing Arsenal. Even so, Arsenal had the intent to score another two within three minutes of the second half and kill the game. Despite captain Martin Odegaard’s double and Riccardo Calafiori putting the icing on the cake, Arteta did not heap importance on the result.
“It’s something that hasn’t been done so great to be part of that,” he added. “But as a team we want to achieve many other things that are far more important than that.
“To put landmarks, we have to really make it to a very different level. But obviously, this team has done a lot that hasn’t been done in many, many years or in the history of the club which means a lot. But that’s not what we want.”
Arteta would have been speaking from the experience of last season, when Arsenal broke and set numerous Premier League records without winning the competition. Coincidentally, the PSV match was played a year to the day that Arsenal became the first side to win English league football history to win three successive away games by five or more goals. They did so against West Ham, Burnley and set the record against Sheffield United on March 4 2024.
While those and many more milestones were indicative of Arsenal’s quality, it did not guarantee them silverware. That is likely why Arteta was reluctant to go overboard with his assessments on the match, surely the right approach to take after such an unexpected scoreline.
The performance and result should give his players momentum, but they have to build on that. The runs Lewis-Skelly, Rice and Trossard were making into the left channel will need to return against Manchester United, Chelsea and future opponents. The “flow” and “looseness” that Arteta said was in Odegaard’s play will have to remain.
Asked about Nwaneri’s goal threat, and now being one goal off Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen’s joint-record for goals before turning 18, the manager also said: “You see every time he has a goal, what the intention is. If it comes, it comes and it’s great. I’m really impressed with the way he behaved and the way he played tonight. It’s about consistency and now doing it again three days later in another big stadium.”
Old Trafford is the next big stadium for Arsenal to visit and whether it is Nwaneri, Odegaard, Rice or another player, they must ensure the threat on display in Eindhoven was not a one off. The squad have had a tough task with Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli, Kai Havertz (all hamstring) and Gabriel Jesus (anterior cruciate ligament) out injured. Arteta knows their seven goals in the Netherlands won’t solve everything, but it can give them a foundation.
That has been what a lot of their European campaign has been about thus far.
Ahead of the PSV game, Arteta said: “We played very differently home and away in the last year, especially in Europe. We have been much more consistent, we have scored a lot of goals, we have conceded hardly anything, we conceded three goals and had the lowest expected goals against (0.73 per game) in the league phase which is great. That’s a big platform, so we have those resources at the disposal of the team, it’s something the team has already done and now we have to continue to do it.”
Other than the stats Arteta mentioned, they were also ahead in matches for the highest percentage of time (57 per cent) in the league phase. They have continued building that platform with a six-goal buffer for the second leg and a win that marks their first five-game win streak in the competition since the 2005-06 season, when they last reached the final.
It is worth noting that those five wins were in the groups and not the knockout stages, however. That year Arsenal scored just four goals in the knockout stages, drawing 0-0 in at least one leg of each round to the final.
Already scoring more in this knockout phase will not book Arsenal a ticket to the final, especially when they are on Real and Atletico Madrid’s side of the draw.
What it can do though, is breathe life into a season that definitely needed some.
(Header photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
