Arsenal hosts F.C. Porto on Tuesday in an exciting Champions League encounter. The Group G match will take place at Emirates Stadium with Arsenal looking to recover from Saturday’s surprise home defeat to premier league newcomer Hull City. Portuguese club Porto, on the other hand, has just got their title defense challenge back on track with Friday’s 2-0 victory over Pacos Ferreira, following two disappointing draws in the league. With Arsenal looking to retain the momentum they lost on Saturday and Porto eyeing on continuing their winning run, the upcoming meeting between the Arsenal and Porto seems to be an exciting one.
Match: Arsenal vs Porto, Group G, Champions League 2008-2009
Date: 20 September 2008, Tuesday
Venue: Emirates Stadium
Kick off: 19:45 BST (British Standard Time)
Going into the match on the back of 2-1 home defeat to Hull City, Arsenal must seek a strong come back with a spirited performance against the visiting side on Tuesday. With this defeat, Arsenal lost their chance to retain the top place in the league point table. The Gunners currently occupy 4th place with 12 points from six games. In fact, this was Arsenal’s only second defeat at the Emirates Stadium.
The most important thing is that Arsenal had been playing very well in the past few weeks with their strikers finding goals easy to come by. In fact, a seemingly reserve Arsenal side outclassed Sheffield United 6-0 in the recent Carling Cup encounter. So, the setback Arsenal suffered to Hull City came as a big shock to the North London club.
Well, this is not the first time Arsenal lost a game this season. In fact, Arsene Wenger boys received an early blow at Fulham when they lost all three points to the home side few weeks back. However, since then, Arsenal went through a spell of jubilant form that saw Arsenal players finding net too often both at home and abroad. So, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is now hoping his boys would respond strongly after their recent upset. Wenger thinks that the attitude and the spirit in the squad are good, besides admitting that Arsenal was too easy to break against Hull City what, he hopes, his boys would not repeat again.
Footylatest reported:
"I'm confident that we’ll respond well on Tuesday night because the dissapointment is so deep. The attitude is good and the overall spirit in the team is very very good. Today we were caught a little bit for being too easy and I don’t think that will happen on Tuesday.
"They (Porto) are always a difficult side to play. They’ve just beaten Fenerbahce. They played last night and have given enough. We know in the Champions League we don’t have the same risk as we have tonight. We have to rebuild the confidence before Tuesday to get the right belief into the game."
F.C. Porto is the defending champion of Portuguese Liga (Portugal’s premier league), but the Dragons got off to a poor start this season. Porto drew at Benfica in the season opener before defeating Belenenses at home to pick up their first league victory this season. However, Porto faced tough challenge at Rio Ave who held the champions to a goalless draw. Then on Friday, F.C. Porto posted their second straight home victory against Pacos Ferreira thanks to goals from Raul Meireles and Hulk. So, Porto secures the 3rd with 8 points from four matches, bridging the gap between leaders Nacional and Sporting Lisbon.
This has been one of the poorest starts for Porto in the league. May be a number of high-profile departures including Jose Bosingwa and Ricardo Quaresma over the Summer is taking the toll on Porto now. Porto started their Champions League campaign with a 3-1 victory over Fenerbahce at home. So, Porto manager Jesualdo Ferreira will want his boys continue their winning run at Arsenal.
Arsenal started their Europe mission with a 1-1 satisfactory draw away at Dynamo Kyiv. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger did not hand his summer signing Mikael Silvestre a debut game for Arsenal yet. Now, as the former Manchester United defender ready to take to field, Wenger might feature Mikael Silvestre against Porto. Gael Clichy returned to action against Hull City. Abou Diaby and Samir Nasri did not take part in the defeat to Hull with Diaby suffering from thigh injury. However, Samir Nasri might be part of Wenger’s squad for the visit of Porto. Besides, long term absentees Tomas Rosicky and Eduardo will remain sidelined.
Porto does not have as much injury woes as Arsenal has. Midfielder Lucho Gonzalez missed the home victory over Pacos Ferreira. I am not confirmed if the player would be able to feature against Arsenal.
Arsenal and Porto faced each other twice so far. Both the matches came in the Champions League in 2006 with the first match being drawn at Porto, and Arsenal wining the second one by 2-0 at home.
Online Live Score and Updates
Here, I am giving some names of online live score websites from were you can get the online live score and updates of he match:
Live Score
Goalzz
Live Football Scores
Goal.com
Footie Scorez
Despite considering their 2-1 recent upset at home, I think, Arsenal still seems to be slightly favorite for the upcoming encounter against Porto in the Champions League. However, I can not write off Porto yet, especially considering their strength in the midfield. Arsenal will have home advantage and the guile to recover the Hull City wound, while Porto will look for a spirited performance away at Arsenal. So, I think, an exciting showdown is now waiting there at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday for the football fans.