April 15, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nAtletico Madrid await in the last four for the Premier League leaders, who also have a massive clash with Manchester City in the top-flight title race on Sunday.<\/p>\n
That visit to the Etihad Stadium, along with their Champions League hopes, will likely be pinned on Arsenal\u2019s defence, which once again impressed against Sporting.<\/p>\n
Arsenal have kept 13 clean sheets in their 18 Champions League home matches since the start of 2023-24 \u2013 at least five more shutouts on home soil than any side in the competition in this time.<\/p>\n
And that defensive ability made the second leg tough viewing. With a combined expected goals (xG) tally of 0.93 (0.64 Arsenal, 0.29 Sporting), this marked the lowest of any Champions League game this season, and lowest in any quarter-final match in the competition since Barcelona against Manchester United in April 2019 (0.68).<\/p>\n
But it also provided a solid response amid a three-match losing run in domestic action, with the Gunners going down to Man City in the EFL Cup final, Southampton in the FA Cup quarter-finals and Bournemouth in the league.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike being at any other top club, there\u2019s noise with everything,\u201d Rice said of Arsenal\u2019s recent struggles.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is Arsenal, there\u2019s noise with every game. If you don\u2019t play well, take it with a pinch of salt and keep moving.<\/p>\n
\u201cBring on the last few weeks. It\u2019s a rollercoaster. Nobody\u2019s going to hand you anything in this game. Let\u2019s keep going, and what will be, will be. Let\u2019s keep going strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immediately looking ahead to City, who trail the leaders by six points but boast a game in hand, Rice insisted that Arsenal will travel to the blue side of Manchester looking for the win, rather than settling for a point.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, you have to win every game,\u201d the Englishman continued. \u201cWe want to win every game in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur record this year has been amazing in all competitions. It\u2019s why we play the game. It\u2019s a game of football at the end of the day. [It\u2019s about] how much you want it, so I know I\u2019ll be ready, I know the boys will be ready, so let\u2019s go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Read More<\/a>SoccerNews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soccer Declan Rice is not interested in any opinions from outside of the Arsenal camp after they scraped into the Champions League semi-finals. Wednesday\u2019s uninspiring goalless draw at the Emirates Stadium was still enough to see Arsenal past Sporting CP with a 1-0 aggregate win, thanks to Kai Havertz\u2019s late winner in the opening meeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":899483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100235,30281,2005],"tags":[7899,9237],"class_list":{"0":"post-899482","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-who","8":"category-cares","9":"category-soccer","10":"tag-cares","11":"tag-who"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}