9 jaw-dropping stats from Arsenal’s thumping 7-1 Champions League win over PSV
Arsenal took a giant leap towards the Champions League quarter-finals after a 7-1 hammering of PSV Eindhoven in the first leg of their last 16 match.
The Gunners travelled to the Netherlands feeling the pressure after firing blanks against West Ham and Nottingham Forest to leave them 13 points behind Liverpool in the Premier League.
But Mikel Arteta’s side, playing without a recognised striker, tore into their Eredivisie opponents from the first whistle and Jurrien Timber headed the opener within the first 20 minutes.
Goals from Ethan Nwaneri and Mikel Merino followed before the break – PSV’s late first-half penalty was the definition of academic – before Arsenal stepped up another level in the second period.
Martin Odegaard helped himself to two goals – the first Champions League double of his career – while Leandro Trossard and Riccardo Calafiori also got in on the act.
Afterwards, Mikel Arteta said the win had given his players “joy and confidence and belief”, but was not getting carried away when questions were put to him about the records that his team had broken.
“For sure, it’s something that hasn’t been done, so great to be part of that,” Arteta said. “But as a team we want to achieve many other things that are far more important than that.
“The happiest thing is we are in a very strong position to go to the next round, which is where we want to be.
“But there’s still a job to do in London in a week’s time.”
We’ve gathered together nine amazing stats from a historic night in Europe for Arsenal and their supporters.
– Arsenal are the first team in Champions League history to have six different scorers (excluding own goals) in an away knockout stage game.
– The Gunners are also the first team to score 7+ goals away from home in a knockout stage match.
– It was Arsenal’s biggest win in a European away game since November 1993, when they beat Standard Liege 7-0 in the Cup Winners Cup.
– This was the first time two English teenagers had combined for a Champions League goal in the competition’s history (Myles Lewis-Skelly’s cross for Ethan Nwaneri to score Arsenal’s second).
– Nwaneri became the second-youngest Arsenal player to play in a Champions League knockout stage game (17 years, 348 days), after Cesc Fabregas against Bayern Munich in March 2005 (17 years, 309 days).
– The Gunners youngster also became the third English player to start a knockout stage game under the age of 18, after Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden.
– Arsenal were leading 5-1 by the 48th minute; the earliest an away side has ever scored five goals in an away Champions League game.
– Arsenal have won five successive Champions League games in a single edition of the tournament for the first time since 2005-06 (Sporting, Monaco, Dinamo Zagreb, Girona, PSV).
– This was PSV’s biggest home defeat in European competition, overtaking a previous 4-0 loss to Arsenal in September 2002.
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