Arsenal v Olympiakos – live! | Barry Glendenning

• Hit F5 for the latest or use our auto-refresh button below • Live scoreboard: all of tonight’s Champions League goals • Check out our all-singing, all-dancing stats centre • Email your thoughts to barry.glendenning@guardian.co.uk • Follow Valencia v Chelsea here 18 min: “So Chamberlain’s got his first of the season and now us Saints fans get to be treated to the usual game of the big six media pretending he sprouted out of one of their academies (a la Bale and Walcott),” writes Lee James, who appears to be that rarest of creatures: a paranoid football fan with a persecution complex. “Also, at Southampton he favoured going only by Chamberlain, presumably to make life a little easier for journo’s- has he gone back to both names now?” 15 min: Slack Arsenal marking at the corner enables Olympiakos to go close again. The corner was pulled back to an Pablo Orbaiz on the edge of the Arsenal penalty area, who shot. his effort pinballed off a couple of players and broke kindly for Rafik Djebbour lurking on the edge of the six-yard box. He shot for the bottom left-hand corner, but with Wojicech Szczesney beaten, Mikel Arteta was on hand to clear the ball off the line. 13 min: Rafik Djebbour crosses into the Arsenal penalty area after a good Olympiakos attack down the left flank. Emmanuel Frimpong is back to cover and puts the ball out for a corner at the near post. 13 min: Chamakh has a pop from distance. Wide. 11 min: From the centre of midfield, Andrei Arshavin strokes the ball out wide for Tomas Rosicky to chase down the inside left channel. Right-back Vassilis Torossidis wins the race to the ball and clears it up the field. 10 min: Corner for Arsenal, which Mikel Arteta swings into the near post. Olympiakos clear. GOAL! Arsenal 1-0 Olympiakos (Oxlade-Chamberlain 8) That’s a great goal from the 18-year-old making his debut in the Champions League. Running on to a through ball to the edge of the box, Oxlade-Chamberlain catches a break when the ball breaks off an Olympiakos defender and bounces back into his path, allowing him to stroke a diagonal shot into the bottom right-hand corner from 18 yards. 7 min: Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain ambles down the right flank with the ball at his feet, passing it square to Mikel Arteta before I’ve got to the hyphen in ‘Oxlade-Chamberlain’. 4 min: The first chance of note falls to Olympiakos, with Ljbomir Fejsa getting on the end of a cross to prod the ball wide of the upright from 10 yards when he should have at least hit the target and could probably be expected to have scored. 3 min: The camera cuts to Olympiakos goalkeeper Franco Costanzo. Sadly, he isn’t small, hunched, red-haired and wearing a cheap pullover under a cheap tweed jacket. 2 min: “Here’s a grievance,” writes Bruce Cooper. “Wenger never properly replaced Fabragas and Nasri despite knowing they were going to go all summer. Where is the Joey Barton shaped piece needed to hold together their crumbling puzzle. Serenity now, the Championship later.” 1 min: Arsenal kick off playing from left to right in an Emirates Stadium that looks fairly sparsely populated by its usual match-night standards. Not long now: To warm applause, a blushing bride and groom took their seats in the Emirates as the teams made their way out on to the pitch, with the bride wearing a long white dress, Arsenal’s players wearing their usual home kit of red and white shirts, white shorts and white socks, and Olympiakos’s in blue shirts, shorts and socks. How they’ll line up tonight: With Robin van Persie and Aaron Ramsey the surprise omissions from Arsenal’s line-up, they’ll play a 4-3-3 with Emmanuel Frimpong and skipper Tomas Rosicky on the left and right of Mikel Arteta in the midfield trio, while Andrei Arshavin and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain will bookend Marouane Chamakh up front. Boasting former Aston Villa defender Olof Mellberg, scorer of the first ever goal at the Emirates Stadium, in their defence, Olympiakos will line up in a 4-2-3-1, with Ljubomir Fejsa and Pablo Orbaiz patrolling the space between the back four and a midfield trio of Kevin Mirallas and David Fuster on the left and right of Ariel Ibagiza, with Rafik Djebbour on his own up front. An email from Mark Coale: “I thought water bottles were on the Arsenal sideline just for Wenger to kick when he got angry and/or ejected,” he writes, forgetting that Mr Wenger will be watching tonight’s match from the directors’ box, as he sits out the second game of his two-match touchline ban. SERENITY NOW! No, your eyes don’t deceive you, the Olympiakos goalkeeper’s name really is Franco Costanzo. “Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!” Arsenal: Szczesny, Sagna, Mertesacker, Song, Andre Santos, Frimpong, Arteta, Rosicky, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Arshavin, Chamakh. Subs: Fabianski, Park, van Persie, Ramsey, Jenkinson, Gibbs, Coquelin. Olympiacos: Costanzo, Torosidis, Mellberg, Marcano, Holebas, Orbaiz, Fejsa, Ibagaza, David Fuster, Djebbour, Mirallas. Subs: Megyeri, Modesto, Pantelic, Papadopoulos, Makoun, Potouridis, Abdoun. Referee: Carlos Velasco Carballo (Spain) Preamble: With their recent 3-0 win against Bolton and the mild turmoil enveloping Manchester City having moved their team from the unforgiving focus of the Crisis Spotlight, Arsenal fans will tonight be hoping for a routine home win that will help steady a ship that spent the early part of the season listing in choppy, waters, like one of those trawlers you see on Deadliest Catch, but with a stubborn Frenchman gazing impassively from the wheelhouse, rather than a chippy Scottish cursing the cameras for forcing him to pretend his natural inclination is to put the safety of his crew over the prospect of landing a giant haul of cod. At the time of writing, no Arsenal players have refused to play in tonight’s match, while Arsène Wenger is understood to have banned his substitutes from wearing tracksuits or drinking from water-bottles so that anyone wishing to throw a showbiz hissy-fit will have nothing to fling to the ground in anger in order to show just how angry they really are. Having drawn with Borussia Dortmund in their opening Group F match, tonight Arsenal entertain Olympiakos, who began their Champions League campaign with defeat at the hands of Marseille. Eschewing this reporter’s perfectly adequate nautical metaphor in favour of a rail-related one of his own, Wenger has acknowledge that his side is “a train that left the station a bit late” and said they “cannot afford any more to drop our consistency”. In the Olympiakos camp, his opposite number Ernesto Valverde has been bigging up his team’s chances, saying the match is “going to be very difficult for us”, pointing out that Arsenal “have a lot of quality players with a great deal of experience” and pointing out that his side are “up against the toughest of opponents”. For Arsenal, Gervinho, Laurent Koscielny and Theo Walcott are among the lame and halt who miss out through injury, while Olympiakos players Giannis Fetfatzidis, Giannis Maniatis and Francisco Yeste have also been ruled out. Tune in around 7.15pm for more team news. Champions League 2011-12 Arsenal Olympiakos Champions League Barry Glendenning guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 28, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.