Arsenal did not let down Arsene Wenger on what was his
17th anniversary as manager on Tuesday, easing to a 2-0 win over Napoli
and taking a huge step towards the Champions League knock-out stages.
First-half
goals by record-signing Mesut Ozil and in-form Frenchman Olivier
Giroud, his sixth this season and coming a day after his 27th birthday,
gave the Gunners their 10th successive win.
While
they took a firm grip on their group with six points from two games,
Chelsea got its campaign back on track, after an embarrassing opening
home defeat to Basel, with a 4-0 rout of Romanian side Steaua Bucharest.
Elsewhere
Barcelona has a firm grip on its group with maximum points after a 1-0
win over a gallant Celtic, which played the last half hour with just 10
men as captain Scott Brown was sent off.
Barca has a
two-point lead over AC Milan, which faces it next in a double header,
after the Italian side salvaged a 1-1 draw in Amsterdam with a Mario
Balotelli penalty four minutes into stoppage time.
Barca’s
Spanish rival Atletico Madrid displayed the grittiness that its coach
Diego Simeone displayed during his playing career to come back and beat
Porto 2-1 away and top the group on six points, leaving it unbeaten on
the field of play this season.
Arsenal holds a
three-point lead over both Napoli and last season’s beaten finalist
Borussia Dortmund, which beat Marseille 3-0 and will provide a stern
test for Wenger’s men in the upcoming double header.
Wenger, though, was in raptures over his side’s performance against Napoli.
Amazing play
“The
first half was amazing, absolutely fantastic. Everything was in there.
All that you dream to see when you come to watch football,” Wenger said.
His
Dortmund counterpart Jurgen Klopp had to watch his side win from the
stands because of a UEFA ban, but he was delighted with what he saw as
two goals from Polish striker Robert Lewandowski and another from Marco
Reus saw the side score an easy win.
“It was a great game, Marseille is a strong team and you have to give it everything you have.”
Chelsea
recovered from an early blow of Fernando Torres limping off with
Brazilian Ramires playing the major role by grabbing a double, although
German international Andre Schurrle was the player to take the eye.
Chelsea
next faces two games in succession against Schalke, which will go into
the first match top of the group thanks to impressive young German
international Julian Draxler’s second-half goal that saw off Basel 1-0
in Switzerland. The game had been stopped in the first-half due to a
group of environmental protestors abseiling from one of the stands.
Despite
Barcelona — which was missing the injured Lionel Messi — struggling to
overcome Celtic, its coach Gerardo Martino was more than satisfied with
the performance which was decided by Cesc Fabregas’s excellent header 15
minutes from time.
Porto’s marksman Jackson Martinez
gave Porto a first-half lead but Atletico fought back to win with
second-half goals by Uruguayan international Diego Godin and Turkish
international Arda Turan.
The results:
Group ‘E’:
Basel 0 lost to Schalke 1 (Draxler 54); Steaua Bucharest 0 lost to Chelsea 4 (Ramires 20, 55, Georgievski 44-og, Lampard 90).
Group ‘F’:
Arsenal 2 (Ozil 8, Giroud 15) bt Napoli 0; Borussia Dortmund 3 (Lewandowski 19, 80-pen, Reus 52) bt Marseille 0.
Group ‘G’:
FC Porto 1 (Martinez 16) lost to Atletico Madrid 2 (Godin 58, Turan 86); Zenit Saint Petersburg 0 drew with Austria Vienna 0.
Group ‘H’:
Ajax 1 (Denswil 90) drew with AC Milan 1 (Balotelli-pen 90+4); Celtic 0 lost to Barcelona 1 (Fabregas 75). — AFP
First points
for CSKA
CSKA
Moscow earned its first points in Group ‘D’ with an eventful 3-2 home
victory over the Czech champion Viktoria Plzen on Wednesday.
The result:
CSKA Moscow 3 (Tosic 19, Honda 29, Reznik 78-og) bt Viktoria Plzen (Rajtoral 4, Bakos 90+1).
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