Arsenal will face Napoli in the quarter-finals of the Europa League as we continue our quest to secure European silverware for the first time since 1994.
We’ve only ever faced the Italian side twice before in European competition, winning 2-0 at home and losing 2-0 away in the group stages of the 2013/14 Champions League.
The draw is arguably the hardest we could have had, made all the more so because the second leg will be played away from home.
If we do beat Napoli, we’ll face either Villarreal or Valencia (Santi or Coquelin/Gabriel) for a place in the final in Baku. And that could involve a clash with Olivier Giroud’s Chelsea who are on the other side of the draw. A penny for Petr Cech’s thoughts on that.
Game on.
Full draw
Napoli vs Arsenal
Villarreal vs Valencia
Benfica vs Frankfurt
Slavia Prague vs Chelsea
Bring them on.
Oooospina!!!!!
Tough tie.. But we would likely have had to beat Napoli and/or Chelsea in the tournament at some point.. If we beat them, great, it’s one of the favorites knocked out, and unless we badly fuck up, we have a date for the final… If we lose, at least it leaves no more ambiguity of how wer going to get champions league next year: only top four finish will do, and wel have no distractions of other tournaments to achieve it.
we just lost against bate borisov (???) and rennes in this cup, and there’s still people like you who not only start fantasizing about beating napoli but also think a tie against villarreal/valencia would be easy. i find it unbelievable that i have to read this kind of comment in every article.
Lol
First impression was “Fuck!”. Second impression was “fuck!”….then “ahh! Well!”
As one wise man once said “it is what it is.” We will just have to deal with it is all. I think Pep Guardiola said they were one of the toughest team man city faced last year. And he wasn’t far from the truth. Man City got played off the park first 45 mins in Napoli…i was watching it. They are the only team i wanted to avoid. We have the measure of Chelsea with Sarri in charge.
You make it sound like Napoli is Pep’s Barcelona
I agree with djourou. We’re not the favorites in this ties at all.
Anyone who thinks otherwise must’ve not been paying attention to our away results. Emery needs more time and better players to get us to be as competitive away as we are at home.
I said IF we beat them. We could lose yes, but we also CAN win. A loss is not as assured result as you make it out to be. For fucks sake what is the point of supporting your club if you don’t have even a shred of optimism? IF we don’t get battered away, we can win.
so you saying that if we don’t lose we could win… alright jamie carragher thank you very much have a good one
Not the best tie but I think we will beat them!
Challenging, but we’ve beaten them before. COYG!
Chelsea have an easy run to the final where we will tear them a new one.
I don’t really follow the Italian league – can someone please tell me why Napoli are favourites in the competition?
Napoli is second in Serie A and has consistently gone on to Champions League for the past couple of seasons.
Although they lost Jorginho over the summer and Hamsik in January, they still have a fluid attack through Zielinski and Milik. Let’s not forget the diminutive Insigne as well.
This is turning up to be quite an uphill challenge for Gooners, but still doable.
Coyg
There’s only one Thierry Bergkamp!!
For a second you had me wondering when I posted this comment
Because they have Ospina
Good squad + Ancelloti who has won the CL multiple times = experience in Europe. Italian league is much slower /more technical game = players don’t get nearly as physically drained as they do in the PL. Add in there’s a lot more disparity between top and bottom teams in Italy = not every game is a battle like in the PL. Other leagues also will typically do stuff like Rennes had where they will move around games to give their team a full week of rest before games.
Ah well if we beat them we go forward with more momentum. Home game first will be tricky.
If he’s so good, how come he didn’t qualify from the group stage of the UCL?
The guy has won the CL 3x with 2 different clubs & league titles in Italy, Germany, France & England. Their CL group included PSG & Liverpool, both of whom were considered plausible winners of the competition & they only went out on the last day. Napoli are beatable but that’s a ridiculous way to look at things.
They have a good team with good individuals (eg. Koulibaly, Allan, Insigne and Mertens) and a f*cking good coach in Ancelotti.
Last season they amassed a Serie A-high 91 points and still managed to finish in 2nd due the obscene dominance of Juventus in Italy.
Last season Sarri was their manager as well, but that’s by the by. They only just missed out on going through in the CL but didn’t quite have enough against Liverpool at Anfield.
Arsenal “didn’t have enough” against Liverpool at Anfield either if I recall.
yeah, good thing Juventus got Ronaldo. Nice to see the league giving them a chance to win something. It’s not like they’ve won it for almost 8 seasons straight.
What a joke the Serie A has become. Used to be as enjoyable as the Premier League.
Well, they are organized, tactically flexible, have good players and are physically quite good. Ancelotti is their manager. They’ve lost only their last game of the group stages against Liverpool and also had PSG in the group.
I’d rather have us play Chelsea than them – then again, with our form as of late, we should be able to beat them twice.
Not Arsenal, not arsenal, not arsenal..pls Chelsea…Fuck!
And then the Chav wankers mean we play away 2nd leg. Double fuck
That was the worst possible draw
Still excited by our chances tho..fuck it, lets do this. COYG
More frustrated that we’ll play the 2nd leg away than actually drawing Napoli…
More time to grab one of those sweet away goals though.
(if extra time happens of course)
With away goals rule and potential of extra time I think it’s an advantage to play away from home in game 2.
Frankfurt would be my worst possible draw. For me they are favourites with Chelsea.
On the bright side, I’m happy we drew them this early in the knockout phase. As beating them would mean we eliminate our biggest threat to winning the cup . Losing to them would, on the other hand, allow us to solely focus on the race for top 4. It’s a win-win situation ! But I’m confident we will go through and give Petr Cech a fairytale ending against the Chavs in the final !
Yes! Love the positive spin. Also this is a Champions League tie which is what we want right? High quality games, can’t gift them a few goals. Hope we stay fit in April, looks like between Everton (A), Napoli (H), Watford (A), Napoli (A), Crystal P (H), we’ll have 5 games in 15 days.
Absolutely go along with this. Losing to Napoli early is not a crime and means we can focus on fighting Sp*rs out of 3rd. Beating them early, gives us massive confidence and means we can bounce Sp*rs out of 3rd.
Shit draw! Fuck you, Van Hooijdonk!!
Would be fun…I still remember that absolutely tasty ozil debut season goal against them at emirates 😉 .
Still his best moment in the shirt..
I think his best moment in an Arsenal shirt has to be THAT goal against Ludogorets Razgrad away in the CL ?
Balls, but at least they’re serial bottlers, and this year we’re finding ourselves beating or playing good football against top teams, so I give us good chances to go thru this one. If we beat them, is one strong opponent less left.
A bit unfair to call them bottlers when they have much lesser resources compared to Juventus. PSG are the bottlers.
Thing is, they aren’t bottlers on Serie A, but they quite often been tagged as favorites on some European clashes just to bottle it, I mean, they almost bottled it yesterday against Dynamo
What are you on Dave? They played Red Bull Salzburg, and Napoli are not bottlers. They beat Liverpool AND PSG needed a last gasp equalizer from Di Maria in Paris to salvage a point this season. In their win over Liverpool, they limited the Pools to zero (0) shots on target for the entire 90 mins with Salah, Mane AND Firmino in the lineup. This is a dangerous team and we need to respect them 110% for us to go through
Right, messed the teams up, my bad. And I agree with you, in not moment did I said they’re a bad team, au contraire I believe they’re one of (if no the) hardest team we could face, but they do have a tendency to slip up during final instances of Europe competitions (last EL against Leipzig, getting out of 17/18 UCL, losing the second place to Shaktar, hell I remember they losing a semi against dnipro.. etc). Don’t take me wrong, they’re a very good team, but they tend to lose in final instances. Will I be surprised if they… Read more »
Spurs
Villarreal v Valencia winner for our semi final, not Benfica/Frankfurt
we’re the underdogs then.
hopefully the attitude will be better from the first whistle instead of us walking out there thinking the game is won even before we’ve kicked a ball
Not as bad as it seems. If we beat them, then we are essentially knocking out the one of the favorites early and then Semi Final (Villareal/Valencia) might be easier than the Quarter . On the other hand, if we do go out, it means we get to focus 100% on top 4 in the league. It’s best to play the top teams earlier on IMO.
Definitely hardest possible draw but fuck it, we can still win it the hard way. Don’t we play Villareal/Valencia in Semis though (rather than Benf/Frank)?
Whenever, whoever, wherever
The Gunners are ready ever
Oof the away game is gonna be quite tasty! Fireworks and flares, mad Napoli fans who will probably jump on our team bus and will definitely try and keep the team up all night making noise outside our hotel. Ancelotti vs Emery. Koulibaly vs Aubameyang. Ramsey vs Hamsik. Bring it on
Hamsik left for china i think
Him too? A proper club legend who broke Maradona’s goal record for them, thought he’d never leave.
That means Allan and Fabian Ruiz in their midfield. Think we’ll need Torreira motivated for a big midfield battle
That’s a good reason to leave. He made history, and now shifts his focus to securing his financial future.
I think his financial future was secured long ago, but I understand what you mean Red Sky
We play either Valencia/Villarreal in the semi?
This is potential semi-final: NAPOLI OR ARSENAL VS VILLARREAL OR VALENCIA
Which means either Santi or Coqelin and Gabriel return. Let’s beat Napoli, would love to see some familiar faces again.
And HFB in the final.
Agent Ospina! Hope he adopts his trademark style of playing behind the goal line.
I doubt he can play against his parent team…or whatever the word actually is.
Ospina has hardly played since Meret got fit. He will presumably be on the bench….which is a shame for us !
Sure he can. Courtois played against Chelsea a few years back. UEFA doesn’t recognized can’t play against your parent club clauses.
I don’t tink it’s not allowed in England, I think it’s rather a clause in the loan contracts that the player isn’t allowed to play against his actual club. Would be no surprise to me if a similar clause is in the loan contract with Napoli. But as Meret is likely to play anyway, it’s not really important.
Given that we lost our last two away games, and had to bust our balls to win the 2nd legs, I don’t mind playing at home first. IF we can do the business at home, go to Napoli, sit back and hit them on the break. If we win this round, I feel we have one hand on the trophy.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Even if we do beat Napoli, both Valencia and Villarreal are very respectable opponents, and (most probably) Chelsea in the final won’t be a piece of cake either. 5 very tough matches are ahead of us if we want to win this competition. We can do it, but one poor away performance and we can be out as well.
Spot on. But the competition now get´s really interessting, we´ll only play good opponents from now on. I really like beeing still in it. Would be a shame to be without a chance for any silverware in march.
Valencia are respectable. Villareal, sadly, are flirting with relegation.
I reckon a clean sheet is more important… It was Griezmann’s goal that did us over last year
O-0 at home is a better result than a 2-1 win imo, as odd as that may sound
So Arsenal will play first at home on 11 Apr. Better book your tickets to Italy for 18 April.
I hate the fact that we get to play the 2nd leg away, but it could be a blessing in disguise considering our away days syndrome. Let’s do them proper at the Emirates fortress, then Emery performs a tactical masterclass to draw a blank in Naples. We got this! COYG!!! ?
There’s a real chance of English teams winning the UCL and Europa. I think we have to now win this to guarantee a place in the UCL next season…or finish third.
I think it’s only a problem if Sp*rs or Manure win it
Spuds draw City and Manure draw Barca. Hahahahahahahbahahabababahahahahahaha!
Ha!
and Chauvs win EL
We’d only miss out by finishing 4th if 5th and 6th placed in the league win both European tournaments. Fucking unlikely.
Not even then. If we get 4th we’re qualified for CL. It COULD be six teams from one league.
Maximum number of teams from one association is five (5) according to UEFA. If Man Utd win the UCL but finish 5th while Chelsea win the UEL but finish 6th and we finish 4th, we will be playing EL football again next year (God forbid)
If there any English team winning the Europa, it is us. Ain’t no way Chelsea are going to win as long as we are still in with a chance. If we get dumped, we turn our focus to 8 league game finals (which I am highly optimistic of finishing 3rd)
Apologies, the UEFA website made it look like we’d face Benfica/Frankfurt…my bad.
Napoli’s last 5 league games: 1W, 3D, 1L
And they almost let Red Bull back into the game last night…
Let’s hope they can keep up their rubbish form
but Napoli are second 10 points ahead of Roma (sitting 5 in Serie A) and 18 points behind Juventus, so they they have nothing else to play for and can afford to rest players in the Serie A games
Tough draw. Good.
Let’s win this thing properly, COYG!!
I think this is a good draw for us.. and you can bet Arsenal where the team Napoli least wanted to play this early.
It’s actually nice to have a European tie worth looking forward to
Still think top 4 finish is the more likely way back to CL footie. So look at it as a win win situation. If we don’t progress in the cup we can focus in the league. If we do beat Napoli then we have two bites at the cherry. CL footie is so important for us to be able to attract the quality players we need to buy this summer.
Bring em on I say! At this stage, we were bound to be drawn with a decent team anyway. Plus, we ain’t too bad vs decent teams now!
Is it just me?… But I really don’t like the fact that we are hosting them first..i prefer we go away first looking at the way we have been performing in this knock out stages
Trust me, playing at home first is an advantage to us IF we get a positive result (win without conceding). Rather than go to Napoli first and (God forbid) lose then chase the game at home in the 2nd leg. These Italian teams know how to defend leads. Here’s to hoping we beat them at home and keep a clean sheet then they do the chasing in the 2nd leg, which could play to our advantage as we can hit them on the counter. Which would you prefer? That’s the question
Anything can happen in these type of tournaments, no matter it’s Napoli or anybody else, if you put in good performance over two legs, you have chance to qualify for next round.
So I hope this is not any kind of difficult draw for Arsenal. But this time we need to get best possible result in first leg unlike last rounds, because second leg will be away quite difficult considering the opposition like Napoli.
I think Emery and his team will do the job for us.
COYG
Last time they paid us a visit they trashed the Piedbury shop.if they wanted their world-famous pies all they had to do was to ask nicely and pay. They looked to me like the Italian equivalents to our own hovel-dwelling Spuds…patate.
Le patate le patate,
Con in mezzo Manzotin
Petr cech’s a gooner. He wears a gooner’s hat.
Cannons out and blazing. COYG!!!
I don’t think Napoli will be too pleased they have to play Arsenal in quarters either, especially given our form (minus the idiotic EL away losses in the previous rounds). COYG.
No worries guys, we have pep guardiola of europa league coaching us.
??? Not funny dude, but you still got me laughing
Chelsea Arsenal final! What a promotion for Europa.
Tough draw, though I don’t give a crap about whether it’s home or away first (and, let’s be honest, it really makes very little actual difference).
We can beat Napoli.
It will be tricky but we must snatch a win away then take them apart at home.
We have the quality to do it.
As for the win against Rennes, Several things – 1) There are no absolutes. I mentioned before we will revert to back 3 when need be to : a) Take advantage of the excellent Kolasinac. b) Suit our selves to the availability of Cbacks plus the nature of the opposition. 2) We have two systems at the moment up top. Either two high up with Auba/Laca supported by the vision of Ozil or 1 up top in either Laca or Auba supported by two wide in Iwobi and Mhkitaryan. 3) Granit and Ramsey. They have forged a surprisingly decent partnership… Read more »