88 mins: Arsenal are keeping the ball very well at the moment. Raya boots a long ball forward and though a defender wins that header, Arsenal are all over the second ball and get it straight back again.

87 mins: Arsenal look the more likely scorers at the moment. Trossard nudges the ball through Diomande’s legs and would have had a superb shooting chance if only Diomande hadn’t still existed. As it is, he’s in the way.

86 mins: Sporting bring on Giorgios Vagiannidis and Rafael Nel, with Quaresma and Trincao coming off. It’s do or die now for the Portuguese.

85 mins: Close! Great work from Jesus to spin his man on the left, and he gets into the area, convinces the keeper that he’s going to cross and then shoots, from a very acute angle. Not a terrible idea, but the execution isn’t there. Goal kick.

84 mins: Arsenal hit the post! Dowman takes a right-wing corner, Trossard meets it way beyond the far post, and really hitting the post was probably the best he could do. And he does it. So that’s good.

80 mins: The free-kick drops at the feet of Havertz, who’s facing the wrong way and backheels into a defender.

80 mins: Araujo is booked for fouling Dowman. Not a lot of contact, but what there was was late and of the studs-on-foot variety.

79 mins: Arsenal take off Eze and Martinelli and bring on Gabriel Jesus and Leandro Trossard.

78 mins: Some substitutional news: Sporting have brought on Geovany Quenda, Daniel Braganca and Joao Simoes, and taken off Catamo, Goncalves and Morita.

77 mins: Their corner leads to another corner, which leads to the referee giving a free-kick for a foul on the goalkeeper, who nobody touches.

75 mins: It’s increasingly fraught. Sporting must score. Arsenal would quite like to but don’t need to and aren’t sure how. The referee isn’t sure what he ought to be doing. Arsenal have a corner.

72 mins: Havertz goes down on the left. The referee gives Sporting a free-kick.

70 mins: The match has turned a bit bad-tempered in the last few minutes, and the referee decides he needs to stamp it out and can identify the person behind it. Mikel Arteta is booked.

68 mins: Raya catches Catamo’s cross. “Arsenal famously used to train their back four by connecting them with a long rope,” writes Justin Kavanagh. “These days they look like the whole team is tangled up in a rope tied to both feet stopping anything that looks like spontaneous movement (with the occasional exception of Eze).”

65 mins: Sporting attack, Catamo’s shot deflects towards Goncalves, and he goes down with Mosquera’s hands on his back. He seemed very keen to fall, and was possibly falling before Mosquera made contact, but he probably was pushed. No penalty.

63 mins: Dowman is now on, and Madueke off.

62 mins: It looks like Madueke’s night is going to end here. And cometh the hour, cometh the (Dow)man.

60 mins: Madueke runs into Goncalves on the left touchline, near halfway. The referee waves play on, and Sporting end up with a corner. Madueke, meanwhile, stays down. An email from Angus Chisholm: “‘Two different classes of games by two different classes of teams’ does ring true insofar as Bayern and Real Madrid have conceded eight (8) goals in three halves of football,” he notes. “Defending is a good and important skill in football and as long as Arsenal remain very good at it they’ll be in with a shout of winning any game, even if their currently blunt attack means they’ll be living on the edge more than they’d like.” Fair point.

58 mins: Now Madueke runs across the penalty area from the right, benefits from a lucky rebound off Hjulmand, ends up with a shooting chance from the left, and lashes it into the side netting.

57 mins: Arsenal bring Kai Havertz on for Gyokeres, who has been poor.

56 mins: And, suddenly, promise! Madueke does well on the right, his cross is headed away but only as far as Martinelli, and he volleys high from the edge of the area.

55 mins: Arsenal toil on the left flank for a while, win and take a few throw-ins, and then cross blindly to a defender.

52 mins: Rui Silva catches the corner under little pressure. “We’re just so blunt in attack, although Sporting are defending well,” writes David Penney. “I feel a 0-0 is the best and most realistic outcome on Sunday, bar a scrappy goal from a corner.”

51 mins: Arsenal have a corner. Either Arsenal’s fans are still making a lot of noise or someone on the TV sound mixing desk is doing an exceptionally good job.

50 mins: Another Eze shot, this from 23 yards or so, hit with real venom but not real accuracy.

48 mins: Araujo is found on the left of the area, he cuts inside Mosquera and attempts a curler towards the far post, which refuses to curl.

46 mins: Within 25 seconds Arsenal have a shot, from the right foot of Eze, out on the right of the penalty area. It would have taken a catastrophic goalkeeping mistake for it to go in, and there isn’t one.

46 mins: Peeeeep! Arsenal get the ball back rolling.

The two teams emerge for the second half. No changes have been made to either of them.

I’ve spent a fun few minutes catching up with the goals in tonight’s other game on TNT Sports’ X feed. It does rather feel that tonight is seeing two very different classes of game being played by two very different classes of teams.

“Why are Arsenal playing like it’s the last five minutes of a cup tie that they’re losing?” wonders Harry Christie. “They look frantic. Someone needs to remind them that they’re winning.” Big 10 minutes for Mikel Arteta, who’s got to remind his team how to keep and use the ball (against what has been, to be fair, a very vigorous, impressive press).

45+1 mins: Eze, with what is probably the last meaningful kick of the half, sends a 20-yarder over the bar.

45+1 mins: Into stoppage time, of which there’ll be a single minute.

45 mins: And now Mbappe has made it 2-3 on the night and 4-4 on aggregate!

43 mins: Sporting hit the post! Araujo lifts the ball across goal from the left and into the path of Catamo, whose volley back across goal beats the keeper but not the woodwork! “It pains me in the US how sloppy Arsenal is,” writes Tom Gauthier. “Their attack is so disjointed I’m convinced they don’t spend any training time in the attack. It resembles watching an amateur youth game.”

42 mins: It’s now 2-2 in tonight’s other Champions League game, between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. Harry Kane has scored Bayern’s second equaliser on the night, and they lead 4-3 on aggregate.

40 mins: Two terrible passes: one from Raya to present the ball from Trincao, one from Trincao to present it right back again. Criminal not to turn that into a shot.

37 mins: The referee, who for a while was so good at refusing silly requests for free-kicks, gives Mosquera one for falling over theatrically.

36 mins: It’s almost a good game, this. Lots of decent play until someone’s at risk of actually achieving something, at which point either some good defending or some poor decision-making snuffs it out.

34 mins: A spell of Arsenal possession ends with a lovely spinning flick from Eze to Gyokeres, and a poor attempted return pass.

31 mins: And then down the other end Trincao finds Goncalves, whose shot is rubbish.

29 mins: A chance for Arsenal! They pass it right, they pass it left, and then they find a ball into the area, Zubimendi prods it infield, and Diomande gets in the way of Gyokeres’ first-time effort. As Ally McCoist points out on commentary, he needed a left-foot blast rather than a right-foot nudge.

27 mins: Now Sporting win a corner, Goncalves takes, and the ball bounces off a few Sporting heads before it’s eventually humped clear.

25 mins: Madueke curls the ball in, and Rui Silva claims.

24 mins: Madueke is tripped by Araujo as he advances off the right flank towards the penalty area. Free kick.

22 mins: Arsenal win and waste a free-kick and everyone is forward for it, which means when it’s passed to Catamo he is essentially clean through on goal, albeit about 90 yards out. Martinelli manages to chase him down and takes the ball off him soon after he gets into Arsenal’s half.

19 mins: Now Madueke nicks the ball away from Araujo and it rolls to Gyokeres, who shoots well over the bar from the edge of the area.

18 mins: Saliba gives the ball away to Hjulmand, who passes on to Trincao, whose shot goes wide.

17 mins: Suarez is played through, bursts into the left of the penalty area, and then a) shoots across goal and wide enough that it ends in an Arsenal throw-in, and b) is given offside.

16 mins: Catamo, back on the pitch and showing no ill effects, is now getting booed. Sporting zip the ball around a bit, working it out of defence and into midfield, but that’s where this particular story ends.

14 mins: Catamo is still down pretending to be injured, while two physios pretend to be looking after him. The referee speaks to both captains about something, and tells the physios to clear off.

12 mins: Catamo takes on Hincapie, gets to the byline, runs the ball out of play and then goes down clutching a shin and rolling around. Hincapie did make contact with his ankle, but not where Catamo is clutching, and about two paces before he went down. That is, to be frank, embarrassing.

10 mins: Two goals already in Munich, where Bayern have just equalised to make it 1-1 on the night, and 3-2 on aggregate.

7 mins: An early corner for Arsenal, but Rice’s delivery clears everyone and bounces out of play.

6 mins: Arsenal have had 82% of the early possession. Now they get into Sporting’s penalty area for the first time, great work from Eze to keep the ball and find Madueke, but that’s as good as it gets.

4 mins: Now Suarez goes down, also thinking he was fouled, and again the referee waves play on. Promising first few minutes from the man in black. “This might be me trying to deal with my stress as an Arsenal fan, but I’m feeling pollyannaish about this match,” writes Kári Tulinius. “If the gunners win, they’ll have some much needed self-belief for the league run-in. If they lose it could be the kind of rock-bottom that teams use to kick against and get momentum back. The problem with the latter is that one person’s rock bottom is another’s rung on a ladder into the depths.”

2 mins: Very high-tempo start. Eze passes to Gyokeres, who plays a first-time return but Eze has run into a defender and fallen over. He thinks he was fouled, but the referee disagrees.

1 min: Peeeeeep! Luis Suarez gets the ball rolling.

The captains exchange pennants. Sporting’s looks rubbish. Not even embroidered. It’s like they forgot their proper pennant and had to buy one from a dodgy bloke outside the ground. It’s less a pennant than an insult.

The players are on the pitch! They have departed the tunnel!

“Aren’t we all loving the latest in the ‘Carry On’ series, Carry On Arsenal,” writes Jeremy Boyce, who’s clearly got his finger on the cultural pulse. Zeitgeist, consider yourself nailed. “Honestly, you really couldn’t make it up, except they manage to do so and put out a new edition every year. As a neutral it’s totally titterworthy watching them blow everything they’re going for, Frankie Howard would be proud of them. Arteta is perfect for the James Robertson Justice role, always believing they’re going in the right direction. Rice is Sid James, streetwise and smoking crafty fag wondering how it’s all gone so wrong. Kenneth Williams? Charles Hawtree? Dowman is clearly the outlier Jim Dale figure, entertaining, slight, light, peripheral but influential. Their problem is the Hattie Jacques weight of expectation that may ultimately be a burden too heavy to bear. She was a great performer, are they?”

Mikel Arteta has an extremely unrevealing chat with TNT Sport. “We know the opportunity that we have, so we’re very excited for the game,” he says. “We need to be more efficient than we were [on Saturday],” he adds. On his squad’s fitness issues, he says: “To be fair, all the boys are desperate to play.”

It’s a curious thing, this training top: in photos those vertical stripes are very bright, on the TV (mine, at least) they’re very subtle. I haven’t seen one in the flesh to know the truth of it.

An email! “Barry Glendenning is absolutely right - Arteta’s anxiety and stress has rubbed off on his players and that is why they are losing,” writes Jeff Sax. “He lacks the composure and confidence that Pep for example has.” I think there’s some truth to this, but I’m also just not completely convinced by this squad. I mean, it’s really good. But it’s not great, and the real issue is that when the players look around the dressing room, that’s also what they think. They look like they don’t truly believe they can win the league, and perhaps the only thing that can convince them they’re a title-winning squad is actually winning the title.

Asked yesterday whether either Bukayo Saka or Jurrien Timber might play tonight, Mikel Arteta said: “Maybe one of them, let’s see.” Well we have seen, and the answer is neither of them, and also no Martin Odegaard or Riccardo Calafiori. But Declan Rice, who missed training yesterday, is in.