UCL burning questions: Can Arsenal ignite attack and Barca come back?

For the best teams in Europe, there are just four Champions League games standing between them and glory. No surprise then that at this point so many seasons seem to stand on a knife-edge. Liverpool’s last chance of silverware this season will require them overturning a 2-0 first-leg deficit against holders Paris Saint-Germain, a task that would surely be beyond Arne Slot’s men if they play anything like they did in the first leg. 

Barcelona must deal with a similar scoreline against them and yet there seems reason for them to hope that they can do it against Atletico Madrid, much as Real Madrid will still be clinging onto hope that they can overturn their 2-1 deficit to Bayern Munich. It is not with any of the trailing teams that we start, however, but a team whose one-goal lead against Sporting is a rare flash of light amid gloomy clouds. Are Arsenal at risk of seeing their season go off the rails?

1. Can Arsenal’s attack fire at last?

They might be favorites to win both the Premier League and Champions League but it is hard to shake the sense that for the next week, Arsenal’s season will teeter on a precipice. Almost everything that happens against Sporting CP on Wednesday night will be seen through the lens of Sunday’s trip to Manchester City and rightly so. The pursuit of a first league title in 22 years is the great project of Mikel Arteta’s tenure. If it doesn’t happen this year, when their rivals have been so off the pace, it is fair to ask if it will ever happen under this manager.

The wobble is upon them, and in results terms, it looks profound. Cup campaigns were ended by Manchester City and Southampton but the cruellest blow yet came in Saturday’s defeat to Bournemouth. Coupled with a win for City the following day, it feels like familiar failings are being magnified in the most pivotal moments. Above all, Arsenal are faltering because of their anaemic attack from open play.

Now, of course, the Gunners remain a force with dead balls and created two excellent chances for Kai Havertz from corners against Bournemouth. There is nothing wrong with Arteta’s professed disappointment last month that his team aren’t scoring more from set pieces. In a Premier League where physical defenses can cover more space than ever before, it helps to have a weapon that can smash a game open. However if Arsenal are to be “the best and most dominant team in every aspect of the game,” then they cannot go on the 10-game run without registering an expected goal from open play that they find themselves in the midst of.

Much of the criticism of that has fallen at the back of the pitch and understandably so. Arsenal’s inability to play through a four-man press was uncovered by Manchester City in the EFL Cup Final and no less ruthlessly exposed by Bournemouth on Saturday. Martin Zubimendi was never a volume ball progressor a la Rodri, Granit Xhaka or Martin Odegaard. As he approaches the 4000-minute mark for the season the 27-year-old looks exhausted. The dynamic ball-carrying Declan Rice of the first half of the season has gone the way of Shergar.

It should be noted at this juncture that Arsenal’s task is no easier without some of their most important players. No one is more effective than Odegaard at getting the ball up the pitch but he has barely cracked 1500 minutes in an injury-ravaged season. Bukayo Saka may not rank highly in terms of moving the ball upfield but there is no one who comes close to him when it comes to receiving progressive passes. He averages 10.7 such receptions per 90 minutes. Leandro Trossard is the only one of his teammates to crack eight.

The best solution to Arsenal’s attacking difficulties from open play and dead balls is to get Odegaard and Saka back on the pitch. They don’t become an elite attack with them, especially given neither has been the best version of themselves this season, but these two are still by far and away the best route for this team to get the ball into dangerous areas and keep it there. Note, for instance, how this team’s attacking third touches have trended downwards in a particularly pronounced fashion since late 2024, when injury issues for first Odegaard and then Saka reared their heads.

Of course, it is not a given that Arteta will be able to call on either of them against Sporting or Manchester City. If that is indeed the case, then there are still things that can be done to not hamstring this team even further as an attacking force. It is not clear that the manager is doing them. 

Gabriel Martinelli and Viktor Gyokeres, for instance, do not make a balanced attack. When Arsenal try to get out, the ball does not stick to either of these two. Gyokeres averages 3.8 progressive passes received per 90 in all competitions, Martinelli 4.6. Gyokeres averages 25.7 touches and loses the ball 11.3 times per game in the Premier League. No forward has a higher proportion of possession lost per touch in the entire division. Martinelli ranks eighth on that particular metric.

When the ball doesn’t stick, it becomes incredibly hard to build threat in open play. Across the season as a whole, Arsenal average 1.04 xG from open play per 90 minutes. In the minutes when Gyokeres and Martinelli share the field, that number craters to 0.29. Add Noni Madueke to the equation, a more effective outlet for progressive passes but a volume dribbler who is prepared to gamble with possession, and you drop to 0.14.

There’s a caveat in there around how often the aforementioned three share the field together. They have only started eight matches together, but those eight matches have delivered only four wins. Perhaps Arteta checked his XI from the 3-2 win over Bournemouth when he started the Gyokeres, Martinelli, Madueke triumvirate again. That seems unlikely though given that none of those three played the final third of the game, little wonder when they combined for three shots in the preceding 66 minutes.

None of these are necessarily bad players — there is a debate worth having over which, if any, are of the level of a Premier League title winner — and it is not as if the cases for Trossard or Kai Havertz at center forward are overwhelming when neither has a Premier League goal in 2026. It is, however, curious that Arteta seems to oscillate between one attack made up of his most transitional forces, including Havertz at the 10, and then go to another extreme of Trossard, Eberechi Eze and Dowman. Surely a middle ground of players who can test their opponent in multiple ways would be more preferable?

Without Saka and Odegaard, it is only entirely clear which looks are the least effective for Arsenal. There is no silver bullet to be found in the players who were available to Arteta on Saturday.  Equally knowing what works the least of all is better than knowing nothing. Right now it is clear that Arsenal cannot go for the sort of all-transition, low ball retention attack they rolled out on Saturday. If they do their Champions League hopes are in danger.

2. Will either Madrid goalkeeper keep a clean sheet?

Madrids Atletico and Real find themselves in different positions going into the second leg and yet it is hard to shake the sense that both will need their goalkeepers to be at their outstanding peaks if they are to be playing in the Champions League semifinals this season.

Let us start with the team that could maybe shade an off day more easily. After all, Atletico Madrid have a two-goal cushion to play with. Four years ago, maybe even last season if you were feeling generous, you’d fancy this team to have no real trouble smothering the second leg. This Atletico Madrid? Against this Barcelona? In this economy?

Defensively, Atleti might be the worst team still standing in the Champions League. Their league phase fixtures were tricky but their path to the quarterfinals — Club Brugge in the playoffs, a seemingly Championship-bound Tottenham in the last 16 — is not one that justifies the concession of nine goals. For the competition as a whole, Diego Simeone’s men allow 13.5 shots and a shade below 1.7 non-penalty expected goals (npxG) per game. 

These are bad numbers at the best of times, all the worse when you come up against a team in Barcelona that is taking nearly 17 shots and scoring not far off three times per Champions League game. Hansi Flick’s men are a fair way over their skis in output terms in the competition but proved at 11 vs. 11 last week that they could really start upping the ante on Atleti. That was an Atletico team that had David Hancko and then Marc Pubill, both of whom will be unavailable this time out.

In other words, this would be a very helpful moment for Jan Oblak to return. The Slovenian has been missing for a month and while Juan Musso made seven saves in the first leg, Simeone will surely want a man who has been there and done it all before, particularly when Oblak has had a solid shot-stopping season with 2.84 goals prevented. “I’ve still not given the line-up,” said Simeone. “Normally, we do it in the hotel, at around seven, half seven [the night before]. So I still have time to decide.”

There’s no such selection headache for Alvaro Arbeloa. It will have to be Andriy Lunin once more with Thibaut Courtois not expected to return until the semifinals, if Madrid make them. Lunin is a very solid goalkeeper and delivered some smart saves in the first leg when Bayern fired shots through a host of white shirts. He probably won’t disgrace himself but it’s also quite hard to see Lunin being prime Courtois.

The Belgian is the sort of shot stopper who can reach a level where his relentlessness seems to psyche out the opposition and imbue his side with that Real Madridian belief in their own inevitability. That, frankly, is the level that this team will need. They have not quite been as vulnerable as their crosstown rivals this season but Real Madrid are still giving up 15.4 shots and 1.5 npxG per game in the Champions League. Set ahead of them is the best attack in the competition. It might just take a player on Courtois’ level to repel Harry Kane and company in the Allianz Arena on a night like Wednesday. This time, Madrid do not have that player.

3. Can Slot find the balance needed to control PSG?

It is hard to argue that Slot did not get his tactics quite spectacularly wrong at the Parc des Princes last week. Deploying a back five for only the second time in his tenure — and the first with his strongest XI — the Liverpool manager made his team no more solid defensively at the cost of nerfing any attacking threat that they might have posed. Few would have expected the Reds to match the European champions as they did in last 16 the previous year but establishing a semi-frequent foothold should not have been an unreasonable expectation.

Though he insisted the approach would be “not so different for tomorrow”, Slot seemed to acknowledge that changes are needed for this deficit to be overturned, starting with how his side keep the ball. “We have to find the perfect balance between being offensive and having the ball,” he said in his pre-match press conference. “You have to do so many things well before your attackers can attack. Tomorrow, two teams are facing each other and both would like to have the ball a lot. Last time, they had the ball [70%] of the time, so that’s the first thing we need to change tomorrow.”

How to do that? There is probably a case to be made for prioritising the technical security of Andrew Robertson at left back and perhaps even Dominik Szoboszlai across from him to get the maximum number of ball players on the pitch. A player like Curtis Jones, who so rarely fritters away possession in midfield, might be a welcome addition if Slot could be sure of his fitness.

There’s a drawback to these players, though. For all the reliability of Jones or Robertson, they are perhaps not the sort you would naturally gravitate towards when you need goals. Given that PSG haven’t been held scoreless since early January, Liverpool are probably going to need three of them. That surely means entrusting the more mercurial talents, even if they lack the experience or legs to aid you out of possession. For the latter, read Mohamed Salah, the former Rio Ngumoha, so impressive in the win over Fulham at the weekend.

“He can [be trusted for games like this] because of his personality; he doesn’t get distracted,” said Slot of Ngumoha. “Everyone who knows his history knows that there’s been expectation around him for many years already, but he’s always been able to focus on football and become better.”

Does Ngumoha start? It is hard to see why he shouldn’t. Alexander Isak is not so fit that you would feel compelled to jam him and Hugo Ekitike into the XI. Cody Gakpo hasn’t scored since February. This doesn’t feel like an occasion for Florian Wirtz off the left of a front three but as a pure number 10 flanked by Salah and Ngumoha. Is it a risk to go for broke from the off? Certainly but the first leg proved that a more cautious approach is no less of a gamble given the talent set against Liverpool.