Arsenal on the spot: Our penalty shootout history

David Raya’s heroics on Tuesday night against Porto made it four penalty shootout wins out of five since Mikel Arteta became manager in late 2019. 

It also helped banish the memory of 12 months ago, when Sporting Lisbon triumphed in the first-ever competitive penalty shootout staged at Emirates Stadium. 

That defeat aside, we have been highly effective in such deciders, including winning the Community Shield at Wembley, 4-1 against Manchester City back in August.

Arteta’s other shootout successes have both been against Liverpool – to lift the Community Shield in a behind-closed-doors match at Wembley in August 2020 (winning 5-4 after a 1-1 draw) and then at Anfield – also behind closed doors – in the Carabao Cup fourth round in October 2020. That also ended 5-4, after six penalties each.

Our overall record in shootouts is also impressive. We have now been involved in 25 – the first was in the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup final in 1980, when Valencia took the honours 5-4 after six spot-kicks each.

But since then, we have won 16 (64 per cent), scoring from 99 of our 129 attempts – a conversion rate of just under 77 per cent. 

Recently though, that conversion rate has been even better. We were perfect from 12 yards on Tuesday, just as we were at Wembley in August. In fact we have been denied from just three penalties out of the last 39 we’ve taken in shootouts. That’s a conversion rate of 92 per cent over the past 10 years. That includes one taken – and scored – by Arteta in the FA Cup semi-final shootout win over Wigan in 2014.

It’s also worth noting that we have at least hit the target with each of our past 41 penalties in shootouts, since Thomas Vermaelen struck the post against Bradford City in 2012.

Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka have now both scored each of the three penalties they have taken in shootouts. Captain Odegaard has taken our first penalty in each of the last three – he won both coin tosses last night to ensure we kicked into the North Bank and took the first penalty. 

The doomed shootout against Sporting was in front of the Clock End and we went second, while only time we were involved in the experimental ABBA system (when teams take two penalties in a row) was in the 2017 Community Shield, which we won 4-1 against Chelsea. 

Patrick Vieira has the most successful penalty shootout record for us in history (scoring four out of five taken), including the goal that won the FA Cup final in 2005 – his last kick of a ball for the club. Perhaps surprisingly, Thierry Henry only ever took one in a shootout. Less surprisingly, he scored it. 

We’ve now had two shootouts in the Champions League, winning both after also knocking out Roma at the same stage in 2009. Of the 25 shootouts to date, eight have come in the League Cup, six in the FA Cup and five in the Community Shield. There have also been four in other European competitions. 

Raya made two saves out of the four penalties he faced on Tuesday, the first Arsenal keeper to make two stops in a shootout since Bernd Leno against Liverpool in 2020, and Raya is now the 11th different keeper to be involved in a winning shootout for us. David Seaman and Manuel Almunia (100 per cent record) won three each, Lukasz Fabianski won two. 

There has already been more penalty shootouts at Emirates Stadium than there were in our 93-year history at Highbury. We had just one there, the incredible 9-8 win over Rotherham United in 2003, which remains our highest-scoring shootout.

Our full penalty shootout record is as below: