Dinamo Zagreb came within 13 minutes of becoming the first team to go through a UEFA Europa League or UEFA Champions League group stage without conceding before CSKA Moskva struck a consolation through Croatian midfielder Kristijan Bistrović.The Europa League reached the end of its group stage campaign on Thursday in thrilling fashion as European giants such as Napoli joined intriguing sides such as Wolfsberg in the round of 32.Read on for everything you need to know about the final round of fixtures:
Tanganga's third game of the season will not be an insignificant one with Spurs needing to beat Antwerp at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to gain top spot in their group and in the process earn seeding for the round of 32. That would mean avoiding big names such as Roma and Villarreal in addition to the four best performing teams to drop out of the Champions League.Whoever Spurs draw they will be acutely aware that as a Premier League side with a rich history, an imposing stadium and perhaps the most famous manager in the world, there will be plenty of teams ready to raise their game if they draw Tottenham. That was certainly true of Antwerp when the two sides met at the Bosuilstadion, Lior Refaelov smashing home a famous winner for the oldest team in Belgium."Maybe there's a target [on us]," Tanganga acknowledges. "We play in the Premier League, we're a big club and the other teams look up to Tottenham and think 'if we can beat Spurs we've got the ammunition to do well in the tournament'.
There are certainly those who seem willing to set deeper roots in England, Jurgen Klopp will have reigned for nine years if he reaches the end of his current Liverpool contract and in the days before the interview Pep Guardiola has just committed to a sixth and seventh year at the Manchester City helm. Both, Wenger says, are "intelligent managers who are heads of clubs who have financial potential to buy the best players in Europe at the moment". Why, he seems to be implying, would they want to go anywhere else?
Might this be a sign of a Premier League with deeper quality than ever before? "I don't think the Premier League is better now than it was 10 years ago."If you look at the Manchester United team or the Chelsea team 10 years ago, they had top quality players. You know what people forget when we played the Invincible season, Man United was Cristiano Ronaldo, [Ruud] Van Nistelrooy, [Paul] Scholes, [Ryan] Giggs. They had an exceptional team you know, so the competition was always of a very high level. "After Chelsea had Drogba, Lampard, Robben, all these players. I don't believe for a second that that has changed. In England in the last 15 years you had the best players in the world.
"He's a threat and I'm really happy with his performance."The question is what that good performance translates into. 다파벳가입 Asked whether Smith Rowe had a chance of featuring against Burnley on Sunday Arteta said: "There's a chance for everybody." It is more likely than not that he will find himself not required when the high stakes matches resume even if the skillset his manager laid out above might be just what Arsenal need against a rugged defense who would like nothing more than to face crosses by the dozen.Yet how can Arteta know whether Smith Rowe, Balogun or any of the other prospects who impressed off the bench are ready for Premier League action? Such is the gulf between European opposition pre-Christmas and even the stragglers of the English top flight that it would take an extraordinary leap of faith to trust that Thursday's bright young things could provide a repeat performance 72 hours later.