Europa League Quarter-Final First-Leg

ARSENAL 1 (Pepe 86)
SLAVIA PRAGUE 1 (Holes 90+3)

MIKEL Arteta couldn’t hide his frustration after his Arsenal side were held to a quarter-final first-leg draw by Slavia Prague tonight (Thursday).

“The final result leaves a difficult taste,” said the Gunners boss after a Tomas Holes header in the dying moments of the game earned the Czech league leaders a 1-1 draw.

The injury-time equaliser may well end up souring Arsenal’s season for good, with Slavia Prague grabbing a vital away goal at an empty Emirates Stadium.

Against a backdrop of flag-draped seats and a soundtrack of trundling trains and wailing police cars, the match would have been difficult for Gunners fans watching from home, as their team struggled to find a way through the well drilled visitors’ defence.

But it looked promising for Arsenal when substitute Nicolas Pepe’s deft strike broke the deadlock in the 86th minute.

The Gunners fully merited their late breakthrough, having dominated a tense and, at times, drab game where they rattled a post and clipped the crossbar as they tried to make their home advantage count.

But Hole’s back post header in the third minute of injury-time escaped the clutches of Bernd Leno to give Slavia Prague an undeserved share of the spoils.

After the match, Arteta summed up the task Arsenal now face in next week’s return tie in Prague. “We need to win the game,” he said. “The mindset is to win the game. We need to score, we’ve done it before and we need to do it again.”

Still smarting from the 3-0 drubbing by Liverpool, Arteta made six changes to his starting line-up. Captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was relegated to the subs’ bench, while Cedric Soares took over from the injured Kieran Tierney at left-back.

The last time these two clubs met in 2007 the Gunners rampaged to a 7-0 victory in a Champions League group game.

But Slavia Prague are a tougher nut to crack nowadays, and in seeing off Leicester and Rangers in this season’s Europa League they were going to be no pushovers.

They were solid and organised, but unspectacular. It seemed only a mistake by Arsenal would see the Czech side have any sight of goal.

At the other end, Bukayo Saka wasted a golden opportunity to open the scoring in the 29th minute. Clean through on goal with only keeper Ondrej Kolar to beat, the England man curled his shot pathetically wide.

Arsenal stepped up their goal search in the second-half. A Willian free-kick came back off the right hand post, while there was another glaring miss on the hour mark.

Alexandre Lacazette won the ball in midfield and ran half the length of the pitch. Approaching goal, and with Kolar bearing down on him, the striker’s angled shot hit the crossbar. The ball bounced away to safety before Emile Smith Rowe could gobble up the rebound.

Slavia Prague, who had been stubbornly happy to frustrate and defend, finally served notice that they could spoil the night when Leno’s outstretched leg kept out Jan Boril’s low drive on 58 minutes.

Then substitute Petr Sevcik missed a gilt-edged chance to get the visitors on the scoresheet.

Arteta threw on Gabriel Martinelli along with Aubameyang and Pepe as Arsenal’s pressure grew. And it was Aubameyang who set up Pepe for the opening goal; the Gabonese striker holding the ball up for his teammate, who did the rest with a neat finish.

Pepe appeared to have given Arsenal this priceless victory, but the Czech’s had other ideas. When the hosts failed to deal with a stoppage-time corner, the ball fell to Holes, who’s header left Leno clutching air.

“What was missing is that when you create big chances in Europe, you have to take them,” said a rueful Arteta after the 1-1 draw. “I think we merited much more than the result that we got.

“When we made the most difficult thing, which was to score the first goal, we just had to wait for the last four or five minutes and manage the game, which we failed to do.

“That gave them the opportunity from the corner and they scored the goal to tie the match and put us in a different position. Looking back to what happened on the pitch, it’s not what we expect.”

Offering a little hope, Arteta added: “I totally believe we can go there and win the match, or I wouldn’t be sitting here. The mindset has to be to go there and score goals and win the game, because we need to score if we want to go through.”

Arsenal: Leno; Bellerin, Holding, Gabriel, Cedric; Willian (Martinelli, 73), Smith Rowe (Ceballos, 88), Xhaka, Partey (Elneny, 78), Saka (Pepe, 78); Lacazette (Aubameyang, 78)
Substitutes not used: Ryan, Hein, Mari, Nelson, Nketiah, Lopez, Azeez

Slavia Prague: Kolar; Bah, Zima, Holes, Boril; Dorley (Lingr, 69), Stanciu (Masopust, 84), Hromada (Sevcik, 45), Provod, Olayinka (Traore, 85); Sima (Kuchta, 69)
Substitutes not used: Stejskal, Kovar, Teci, Visinsky