Champions League Qualifier: Sparta Prague 0-2 Arsenal

Arsène Wenger had remarked in the countdown to this Champions League final qualifying round first-leg fixture that he did not anticipate a red carpet to be rolled out for his Arsenal players. There would be no elegant stroll into the lucrative group phase of the competition, not against a club of Sparta Prague's pedigree.

If the tightness of the tussle that followed did not, therefore, surprise him, the fractious nature of it did.