Shot But Not Dead: Arteta Rides Gunners Into Europa League Quarter Final

Although Arsenal lost at home to Olympiacos in the second leg of the Europa League last-16, we still earned qualification to the quarter-final.

This was made possible through our 3-1 triumph over the Greek side in Athens last week. With that, tonight's result put the scoreline at 3-2 on aggregate in our favour.

Our starting was not entirely bad though we failed to take our chances being the side that created the better ones out of the two contenders. We gave away the ball too often and each time it looked like we were going to take the lead, we fumbled.

Our former defender Sokratis blocked a shot from Nicolas Pepe making it head off the nest post. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang returned to the squad after missing the NLD on Sunday but misfired a lot.

Our captain aimed wide in the first half and would go on to miss other clearcut chances which would have earned him a lot of bashing had we crashed out of the competition at this stage.

El-Arabi was out to keep us in tension like he did late in that game in which he scored to send us out of this contest last season prior to the coronavirus break. He opened scoring to give the visitors some hope of a comeback.

Martin Odegaard and Thomas Partey were introduced. That helped step up out game. The Norwegian almost made it two to his name in two Europa matches but he skied his attempt.

Auba missed two more chances then Olympiacos got reduced to 10 men when Ba hit Martinell who had just come in. It ended 1-0 in their favour but 3-2 on aggregate in our favour.

We will find out who we will play next at tomorrow's draw in Nyon. Our next is this Sunday in the Premier League. We will visit the London Stadium to face West Ham United then we go on a two-week internationalbreak. 

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