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Arsenal’s league phase opponents: Athletic Bilbao (a), Olympiakos (h), Atletico Madrid (h), Slavia Prague (a), Bayern Munich (h), Club Brugge (a), Inter (a), Kairat Almaty (h).
Athletic Club’s league phase opponents: Arsenal (h), Borussia Dortmund (a), FK Qarabag (h), Newcastle United (a), Slavia Prague (a), Paris Saint-Germain (h), Atalanta (a), Sporting (h).
Points required: It’s only a guide from a sample size that couldn’t be smaller, but the three lowest ranked teams to qualify for last season’s knockout phase playoffs scraped through with 11 points each from their eight league phase games. A fourth team, Dinamo Zagreb, also got 11 points but missed out on goal difference.
Aston Villa were the lowest ranked of the top eight teams to avoid a playoff and advance straight to the Round of 16. They did so with 16 points.
Early team news
Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Ben White and Kai Havertz remain sidelined for Arsenal, while captain Martin Odegaard is also unavailable after the recurrence of his shoulder injury. William Saliba is in the squad after recovering from the ankle injury that kept him out of Saturday’s match but with an an arguably far more important contest to come in the Premier League against Manchester City on Sunday, Arteta may not risk the Frenchman, whose replacement Cristian Mosquera, proved a more than capable deputy against toothless Forest.
Athletic will have to make do without their left-winger Nico Williams, a recent Arsenal and Barcelona target before he signed an eight-year contract extension with his boyhood club during the summer. Midfielder Benat Predo and central defender Unai Egiluz are also injured.
The Spanish side’s veteran centre-back, Yeray Alvarez, also misses out as he continues a 10-month doping ban after testing positive for an illegal diuretic following his side’s defeat in the Europa League semi-final last season. Yeray’s suspension has been backdated to June and while Uefa accepted that he ingested the banned substance in error through the use of medication, he was found guilty of committing a “non-intentional anti-doping rule violation” and must serve his time.
Champions League: Athletic Bilbao v Arsenal
Having gone out in the semi-finals to Paris Saint-Germain, the eventual winners, last season, Arsenal kick off their latest Champions League campaign with a visit to Athletic Bilbao. Managed by Ernesto Valverde, in his third spell in charge of the club he represented 170 times as a player, the Basque club have won their first three games of the La Liga season but suffered their first reverse on Saturday in defeat at home to Alaves. They are competing in the Champions League for the first time since 2014 and for only the third time since Uefa pivoted away the old-style knockout European Cup format in 1992. Ah, those were the days … yells old man at cloud.
Like their hosts, Arsenal have three wins and one defeat behind them on the domestic front and could scarcely have hoped for a more straightforward victory than the one they enjoyed at home to Nottingham Forest three days ago. Apart from losing Martin Odegaard to a shoulder injury, things could scarcely have gone more swimmingly for Mikel Arteta’s side as they built up to tonight’s match at the San Mames Stadium. Kick-off in the first competitive match between these sides is at 5.45pm (BST) but we’ll have team news and build-up in the meantime.
