\n<\/p>\n
Kai Havertz scored a stoppage-time winner as Arsenal beat Sporting 1-0 in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final in Lisbon.<\/b><\/p>\n
The second-half substitute poked the ball past Rui Silva late on to give the Premier League leaders a narrow advantage going into next week’s second leg at Emirates Stadium.<\/p>\n
The pressure was on Arsenal coming into this match after they suffered back-to-back defeats for the first time this season.<\/p>\n
And that tension was nearly increased further when Sporting left-back Maxi Araujo crashed a shot against the Arsenal crossbar early on after a superb through ball from Ousmane Diomande.<\/p>\n
The Gunners had plenty of possession in the first half but could not translate that into clear-cut chances. The closest they came to scoring was when Noni Madueke hit the crossbar direct from a corner.<\/p>\n
Sporting continually threatened with fast counter-attacks and almost punished the Gunners when Araujo made another burst forward and cut the ball back to Francisco Trincao, who pulled his shot wide.<\/p>\n
Martin Zubimendi thought he had given Arsenal a second-half lead when he curled in from the edge of the box, but the strike was ruled out as former Sporting striker Viktor Gyokeres was offside in the build-up.<\/p>\n
The hosts piled on the pressure in the latter stages and David Raya made three good saves to keep the scores level, before Havertz snatched the win for the Gunners.<\/p>\n
The victory is Arsenal’s first in three matches and gives Mikel Arteta’s side a boost as they return to Premier League action against Bournemouth at the weekend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Kai Havertz scored a stoppage-time winner as Arsenal beat Sporting 1-0 in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final in Lisbon. The second-half substitute poked the ball past Rui Silva late on to give the Premier League leaders a narrow advantage going into next week’s second leg at Emirates Stadium. The pressure was on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}