Arsenal Maintains Perfect Start with Gritty Win Over Napoli

Arsenal kept their perfect start to the 2026-27 season alive with a gritty 1-0 win over Napoli in the Champions League, a night that mixed control, wastefulness and a flash of fury on the touchline.

Martin Odegaard finally settled it in the 75th minute, drilling home the only goal after Arsenal had spent most of the evening probing, prodding and somehow failing to turn dominance into a comfortable scoreline. One clean strike from the captain, three more points, five wins from five this season. The numbers look ruthless. The performance was anything but.

Odegaard delivers after mounting frustration

From the opening whistle, Arsenal took hold of the game in Italy. They moved the ball with authority, stretched Napoli, and repeatedly carved out clear chances. The pattern was familiar: red shirts flooding forward, Napoli retreating, and opportunity after opportunity going begging.

The longer it stayed goalless, the more it felt like one of those nights. Yet Arsenal kept coming, their superiority obvious even as the scoreboard refused to budge. When Odegaard finally broke the deadlock, it felt less like a twist and more like overdue justice.

"We fully deserved the three points," Mikel Arteta told TNT Sports afterwards. "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 win underlined Arsenal’s growing weight in Europe. Five games into the new campaign across competitions, five victories. They look organised, confident, and increasingly hardened to tight away nights like this one.

Arteta unimpressed by waste in front of goal

For all the control, Arteta’s post-match mood carried an edge. He knew his side had given Napoli too much hope by failing to finish them off early.

"On any other day the result would be different," he admitted. "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."

That blend of satisfaction and irritation summed up the night. Arsenal had been “superb,” as he put it, but also guilty of turning a dominant European away display into a needlessly nervy finale. Against more ruthless opposition, those misses could carry a heavier price.

Touchline rage at attacking trio

If the finishing frustrated him, the late-game discipline infuriated him.

As Napoli broke forward on a dangerous counter-attack in the closing stages, Kai Havertz, Noni Madueke and Christos Tzolis were slow to recover. Arteta’s reaction on the touchline was instant and explosive.

According to TNT Sports co-commentator Lucy Ward, the Arsenal manager was "absolutely raging" as the trio ambled back towards their own half instead of sprinting to help their defence. In a match his side largely controlled, that lapse cut against everything he demands without the ball.

It was a revealing moment. On a night when Arsenal underlined their status as serious European contenders, their manager still saw details to fix, standards to raise, and habits to sharpen.

The result goes in the book as a narrow away win. The performance, and Arteta’s fury, suggest he expects much more from a team aiming to stay perfect deep into this season’s Champions League campaign.