Mikel Arteta spent most of his post-match interview in Prague criticising his own team, which is an odd way to react to a fourth win in four Champions League games. Arsenal beat Slavia Prague 2-1 and were comfortable for 45 minutes. The second half was something else entirely, and the manager was not pretending otherwise.
"We were extremely far from our standards," he said. "In everything we have to do in our basics, in every concept and in everything we discussed to avoid in the game we played in the second half. Very far from the standards we expect from each other, but we find a way to hold on to the result and win the game."
Gyokeres gets the night he needed
Six changes came in from the side that won at Anfield on Sunday, and Viktor Gyokeres led the line in place of Kai Havertz. He repaid it. In the ninth minute he hooked a ball in behind the Slavia defence for Noni Madueke to chase, and the winger finished without fuss. Before the break Gyokeres exchanged passes with Mikel Merino and curled a lovely finish in off the post.
That is the sort of evening a striker under scrutiny tends to remember. He held the ball up, he created, he scored, and he was off on 78 minutes with the job done.
Declan Rice captained the side and was the best player on the pitch by a distance.
The second half nobody enjoyed
Slavia came out of the interval with intent. David Raya had to produce a good stop almost immediately to keep out Oskar Kubiak from the edge of the box, then flapped at a corner that ended with Gabriel Magalhaes hacking a Mojmir Chytil header off his own line. Wiktor Nowak finally got the home side on the board from close range in the 90th minute, by which point the last ten minutes had stopped being routine.
Martin Zubimendi, making only his third start of the season amid persistent talk about his future, was tidy enough without looking sharp. Cristhian Mosquera and Christos Tzolis came on just after the hour, Jurrien Timber and Martin Odegaard with twelve minutes left, and Dowman for the final seconds. William Saliba, back in full training this week after missing the entire season with a back problem, was an unused substitute.
Still unbeaten, still third
Arsenal went through the whole league phase unbeaten last season with a 100 per cent record. Four games into this one they sit third, behind Paris St-Germain and Real Madrid, with the kind of win that counts for exactly as much as a convincing one. Arteta knows it. He just refuses to say it.
"This is a team that has huge spirit, huge conviction and if you give them something they will grab it," he said of Slavia, which was less a compliment to the opposition than a warning to his own players.
Match facts: Slavia Prague 1-2 Arsenal, Champions League league phase, Wednesday 4 November 2026. Scorers: Madueke 9, Gyokeres, Nowak 90. Arsenal are third in the league phase table and unbeaten after four games.
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