Arsenal Maintains Perfect Start with 1-0 Victory Over Napoli
Arsenal kept their perfect start to the 2026-27 season alive with a bruising, narrow, and deeply impressive 1-0 win over Napoli in the Champions League – a scoreline that barely scratched the surface of their dominance.
Martin Odegaard finally made the pressure count in the 75th minute, sweeping home the decisive goal after wave upon wave of Arsenal attacks had crashed against a stubborn home defence. One clean strike, after an evening of near-misses.
For long stretches in Italy, it felt like a training-ground exercise in chance creation. Arsenal carved Napoli open repeatedly, their movement slick, their passing crisp, their control near total. The only problem? The ball simply refused to go in.
The Gunners’ captain changed that. When the opening appeared late on, Odegaard didn’t blink. His finish secured three points and stretched Arsenal’s run to five wins from five in all competitions this season, a start that now carries the weight of serious European intent.
Mikel Arteta, though, did not sound like a manager satisfied with a simple 1-0.
"We fully deserved the three points," he told TNT Sports after the final whistle. "The performance probably doesn’t reflect the result, the team was superb. We showed quality in a lot of moments to break them down and it was a shame because we missed so many great chances."
The missed opportunities clearly gnawed at him. Arsenal had enough clear openings to bury the tie long before Odegaard’s intervention, and Arteta made no attempt to hide that frustration.
"On any other day the result would be different. We should have done it in a different way because of the amount of chances we created but we got the win in the end," he added.
His irritation wasn’t limited to finishing. As the game ticked towards its tense conclusion, Arteta’s composure on the touchline snapped.
With Arsenal pushing for the winner and then trying to protect it, a Napoli counter-attack exposed a rare lapse in discipline from the visitors’ forwards. Kai Havertz, Noni Madueke and Christos Tzolis all failed to track back with the urgency the situation demanded, leaving the back line briefly exposed.
Arteta’s response was immediate and volcanic.
According to TNT Sports co-commentator Lucy Ward, the Arsenal boss was "absolutely raging" as he watched the trio amble back towards their own half. "Mikel Arteta was absolutely raging on the sidelines that Havertz, Madueke and Tzolis weren’t recovering after that attack," she said.
It was a flash of anger that told its own story. Arsenal had controlled the match, outplayed Napoli, and still almost invited trouble through a momentary drop in intensity.
They escaped this time, with the win, the clean sheet, and a perfect record intact. The standards, though, have been set far higher. If this is what Arsenal look like while wasting chances and infuriating their manager, what happens when they finally start to be as ruthless as he demands?
