Arsenal and Sporting Lisbon shared four goals in their first encounter played in Portugal, and now share the same desire to take a step further and reach the UEFA Europa League quarter-finals.The decisive rematch is scheduled for Thursday night at the Etihad Stadium, and albeit the Gunners are favourites to win, the visitors won’t surrender that easy, for sure.##NAJAVA_MECA_7099683##Arteta tinkered with his team and survived the Lions’ onslaughtArsenal’s coach Mikel Arteta says his side are looking to win, of course.”That was the same when we were in Lisbon, but we’re going to have to do better than we did in Lisbon to win against Sporting.”We haven’t had big European nights for three years due to Covid-19 especially. This is probably the first one that we’ve had for a while, and hopefully, we’ll build a really good atmosphere and enjoy it. Our supporters will be there against a really good team that is going to put a big challenge in front of us.”✊ 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛𝘿𝘼𝙔 🆚 Sporting CP🕗 8pm (UK)🏟️ Emirates Stadium🏆 Europa League pic.twitter.com/XJgV2awdWK— Arsenal (@Arsenal) March 16, 2023 Gabriel Jesus and Emile Smith Rowe have both returned to the squad recently – but the Gunners will miss Eddie Nketiah.”He’s still in the boot, so still a few weeks away,” Arteta said in his pre-match press conference. “We need to be patient – it was a nasty injury. It’s a challenge that Eddie’s got ahead of him, but thank God he could have been worse, so he’s not in a bad place.”UEFA EUROPA LEAGUE – Knockout stageSecond legThursday 20.45: (2.20) Fenerbahce (3.50) Sevilla (3.50)20.45: (3.30) Freiburg (3.25) Juventus (2.40)20.45: (3.60) Betis (3.50) Man.Utd. (2.15)20.45: (1.42) Feyenoord (4.70) Shakhtar (9.00)23.00: (3.40) St.Gilloise (3.25) Union Berlin (2.35)23.00: (5.00) Ferencvaros (3.70) Leverkusen (1.80)23.00: (1.35) Arsenal (5.00) Sporting (9.00)23.00: (2.05) Sociedad (3.30) Roma (4.20)*** odds are subject to change ***
