Key occasions
The gamers on a yellow card
Bayer Leverkusen Aleix Garcia and Christian Kofane.
Arsenal Christian Norgaard.
Nick Ames
Competitive steadiness throughout Europe’s leagues can be remodeled with the adoption of a brand new mannequin for distributing income from the Champions League and different Uefa membership competitions, in line with a proposal by the Union of European Clubs (UEC).
Clubs competing within the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League profit this season from a bumper €3.317bn (£2.87bn) prize pot, culled from annual €4.4bn income primarily generated by media rights gross sales. Only €308m of the latter determine is split amongst golf equipment who didn’t attain these competitions, within the type of solidarity funds.
Ed Aarons
Kai Havertz has mentioned the knee harm that pressured him to overlook the first half of the season was probably the most painful expertise of his life however that it has given him “new hunger” to win trophies with Arsenal.
The Germany ahead missed greater than 20 video games after having surgical procedure on the harm he picked up on the opening day of the season within the victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford.
Havertz, who will face his former membership Bayer Leverkusen for the first time since leaving for Chelsea in 2020 within the first leg of the Champions League last-16 tie on Wednesday, was additionally absent for a good portion of last season due to a hamstring drawback.
The 26-year-old’s return has been managed rigorously by Mikel Arteta in latest weeks however Havertz is assured that his health difficulties are behind him after a testing 12 months. “For me it was just tough because I never felt that pain before in my life and it just came randomly,” he mentioned.
Team information
Arsenal’s XI is as anticipated. There’s one change from their last Premier League recreation, a 1-0 win at Brighton per week in the past. The fit-again William Saliba replaces Cristhian Mosquera in defence. Kai Havertz is on the bench in opposition to his outdated membership.
Leverkusen’s facet consists of the England worldwide Jarell Quansah. They make one change from the 3-3 draw with Freiburg on the weekend: Exequiel Palacios comes into the midfield instead of Equi Fernandez.
Bayer Leverkusen (3-4-2-1) Blaswich; Quansah, Andrich, Tapsoba; Poku, Palacios, Garcia, Grimaldo; Terriera, Maza; Kofane.
Subs: Omlin, Lomb, Fernandez, Hofmann, Tilmann, Schick, Oermann, Tape, Culbreath.
Arsenal (4-3-3) Raya; Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie; Eze, Zubimendi, Rice; Saka, Gyokeres, Martinelli.
Subs: Arrizabalaga, Ranson, Mosquera, White, Jesus, Norgaard, Madueke, Havertz, Calafiori, Lewis-Skelly, Dowman, Salmon.
Referee Umut Meler (Turkey).
Barney Ronay
Cruyff’s Ajax, Messi’s Barcelona, Rice’s Arsenal. Stein, Michels, Ferguson, Arteta. The Dark Side of the Moon, The Very Best of The Beatles, Arsenal 2025-26 highlights DVD. Total Football, tiki-taka, hugging the goalie at corners. Get prepared. Make room among the many greats. It may be coming.
And sure, you possibly can snort at this on the web. You can pull-quote excerpts with mocking emojis. Throw in some Niles from Frasier has actually misplaced it stuff. You can level, with justification, to the actual fact these different folks, the precise greats, did it for a very long time, not only one yr.
But the actual fact is we are actually very near a reckoning up. And ought to this occur, it will likely be inconceivable on the essential numbers to exclude the present Arsenal crew from an inventory of the best to have performed the sport.
The head-to-head
These groups have met solely twice, each occasions throughout the second group stage of the 2001-02 Champions League. A swaggering Arsenal facet battered Leverkusen 4-1 at house, then conceded a really late equaliser in a 1-1 attract Germany.
It proved essential: Leverkusen in the end went by way of and reached the ultimate; Arsenal, imperious domestically, failed to achieve the knockout stage.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to live, minute-by-minute protection of the first leg of the Champions League conflict between Bayer Leverkusen and Arsenal in Germany. Arsenal, runawayish leaders within the Premier League, are robust favourites to achieve their third consecutive Champions League quarter-final. That’s occurred solely as soon as earlier than, between 2007-08 and 2009-10, and can be one other marker of their simple progress beneath Mikel Arteta.
While Arsenal topped the league stage with an ideal report of eight wins from eight, Leverkusen completed sixteenth and had to enter the playoffs. They received that fairly comfortably, beating Olympiacos 2-0 on mixture, however they’re a great distance from the glories of two seasons in the past. Tonight is an opportunity to hit the heights once more.
Kick off 5.45pm GMT.
