- This is the worst Arsenal start to a season since…. here comes Europe.
- Do Arsenal have a discipline problem, or is something else going on?
Arsenal have played Shakhtar Donetsk four times in total, all four games coming in the Champions League – and all four games have been won by the home team…
Now I am going to admit from the start I am not fully au fait with the situation in Ukraine vis a vis football, following the Russian invasion, so if I have got anything in what follows wrong, I’d welcome polite corrections and if possible English sources for the information being used. But for now I’ll do my best and at least we can start with something fairly solid by way of information…
For surely from our point of view their most famous player was Henrikh Mkhitaryan who played for Arsenal between 2018 and 2020. He is currently with Inter Milan having played 35 games for Arsenal scoring eight goals. He has played 95 times for Armenia.
But of course we do have the results of the previous games between the two sides….
| Date | Match | Result | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Sep 2000 | Arsenal v Shakhtar Donetsk | W | 3-2 |
| 07 Nov 2000 | Shakhtar Donetsk v Arsenal | L | 3-0 |
| 19 Oct 2010 | Arsenal v Shakhtar Donetsk | W | 5-1 |
| 03 Nov 2010 | Shakhtar Donetsk v Arsenal | L | 2-1 |
And the interesting thing is that in our visitors recent games there have been a fair few goals – in the last five games alone for example 16 goals. Three of the games were victories (by 4-0, 5-0 and 1-0) and one defeat and a draw…
| Date | Competition | Home club | Away club | Score |
| 23/09/24 | League | Shakhtar Donetsk | Obolon Kyiv | 4 – 0 |
| 27/09/24 | League | Veres Rivne | Shakhtar Donetsk | 1 – 1 |
| 02/10/24 | Champs | Shakhtar Donetsk | Atalanta | 0 – 3 |
| 06/10/24 | League | Shakhtar Donetsk | LNZ Cherkasy | 5 – 1 |
| 18/10/24 | League | Kolos Kovalivka | Shakhtar Donetsk | 0 – 1 |
But their league looks very different from the sort of thing we see in England, not least because we are playing a club from a country that is of course at war. In its earliest days the club played in the Russian league being based in the city of Donetsk as you would expect until 2014. But then the Russian invasion forced it to move to Lviv and then Kharkiv, and if I read the history aright, then back to Lviv. That means they are playing 1000 miles from their main home.
After the country gained independence Shakhtar Donestsk was the first Ukraine club to win a European competition and is one of only two (the other being Dynamo Kviv to have won one of the main Uefa competitions. However, since the Russian invasion, the club has been forced to move twice.
From 2014 until the end of 2016, Shakhtar played its home matches at the Arena. Then it moved a couple of hundred miles to Kharkiv and in 2022/23 was forced to play its European games in Warsaw. As I understand it they played their Champions League games last season in Hamburg.
Meanwhile as we have noted before the table for the Champions League is crazy, as is the whole system of the way it is organised this season, with selected teams playing each other once. But that’s Uefa for you. Basically Arsenal are placed 13th with one win and one draw, while Shakhtar are placed 27th with one draw and one defeat.
Arsenal’s situation is two goals scored and none conceded. Shakter’s is no goals scored and three conceded. According to Arsenal.com “No team has scored more goals than Shakhtar (25) in the (Ukrainian league) this season.”
Of course the main bonus for Arsenal tonight is that the referee is not a member of PGMO and therefore not subject to their own specific rules and regulations, but quite what rules and regulations he will be following I can’t say. We can only wait and see, and certainly from Untold’s point of view, have the deepest sympathy and affection for Ukraine in its fight to retain its independence.
