Madueke and Gyokeres give Arsenal 2-1 win at Slavia Prague

Early goals settle the game

Noni Madueke and Viktor Gyokeres scored in the first half to give Arsenal a 2-1 win at Slavia Prague in the Champions League on November 4. The result returned Arsenal to winning ways in Europe after a 2-2 draw at Bayern last month. Arsenal now have 10 points from four Champions League games, while Slavia have one point.

The Premier League champions took control early in chilly conditions in the Czech capital. Madueke scored in the ninth minute. Gyokeres controlled a long clearance from David Raya with his chest and slipped the ball into the path of Madueke, who was sprinting down the right flank. Madueke got past the Slavia defence and beat the diving Ukrainian teenager Nazar Domchak with a low shot.

Gyokeres doubles the lead

Gyokeres, who was one of six changes to Mikel Arteta's starting line-up from Sunday's 1-0 win at Liverpool, made it 2-0 in the 38th minute. After a one-two with Mikel Merino on the edge of the Slavia box, he curled a neat shot off the far post past Domchak.

Slavia, the Czech champions, looked sluggish in the first half and created only one clear chance, when skipper Tomas Holes fired wide from inside the box. They raised their tempo considerably after the break, aiming to avoid a repeat of the 3-0 home defeat by Arsenal in this competition exactly a year earlier.

Second-half pressure

Slavia's Polish midfielder Oskar Kubiak forced a diving save from Raya within seconds of the restart. Later, Gabriel Magalhaes and Raya cleared two headers off the goal line in quick succession with 15 minutes left, and David Zima fired over the bar. Raya also pushed a Kubiak header onto the post.

Slavia pulled a goal back in the 90th minute. David Jurasek's cross bounced through the Arsenal defence, and Wiktor Nowak blasted the ball into the net from close range.

Arteta reflects on the performance

Arteta said his side had to value how difficult it is to win away from home, and that they had done so against a tough opponent, as expected. He described the two halves as very different. "The first one where we played at a really high level in terms of tempo, intensity, quality and clarity in what we had to do," he said.

Arteta was less satisfied with the scoreline. He said Arsenal had scored two goals but should have had three, four or five, and that the team had been far from its standards from the start, particularly in the second half.

The defeat was a further blow for Slavia, who have now gone 23 straight Champions League games without a win. That run leaves them within one of matching the all-time record set by AEK Athens between 1992 and 2006.