Sporting v Arsenal LIVE: Result and final score as Gunners rip through hosts in Champions League

All eyes will be on Viktor Gyokeres it’s fair to say. A hat-trick plundered against Man City threw him front and centre, but his form has been frankly ridiculous in front of goal: across the last month he has scored 17 goals in just nine matches for club and country.

A lot have been against less-than-stellar opponents, it’s true, but even so...many strikers won’t hit 17 this season, let alone this month.

And a hat-trick against Man City counts for plenty, too.

Here’s the state of play in the Champions League before kick-off in Tuesday’s early matches:

1. Liverpool 12 pts
2. Sporting 10
3. Monaco 10
4. Brest 10
5. Inter 10
6. Barcelona 9
7. Dortmund 9
8. Villa 9

Those eight currently occupy the automatic progression places, through to the last 16. Then in the playoff spots:

It’s Atalanta on eight points, then Man City, Juventus, Arsenal, Leverkusen, Lille, Celtic, Dinamo Zagreb all have seven and Real Madrid, Benfica, Bayern Munich, AC Milan, Feyenoord, Club Brugge and Atletico Madrid all have six. Add in PSV on five and that’s the whole list of teams in the playoff spots, down to 24th.

So clearly, a lot of places to jump up or fall down each match right now, depending on whether the Gunners emerge successful.

A big sticking point for the Gunners tonight is that their away form in the Champions League is, to put it nicely, diabolical.

Arteta’s team - dating back to before he was in charge of course - have won just a single away match in Europe’s top competition in almost eight years, and if they don’t win tonight, it’ll go beyond that eight-year mark.

Since beating Basel away in 2016, the Gunners have gone to Bayern Munich, Lens, PSV, Porto, Bayern again, Atalanta and Inter Milan and beaten none of them. Just a solitary 2-1 win over a then-struggling Sevilla team a little over a year ago remains their fond recent memory among Europe’s elite.

To be clear there was a gap when Arsenal weren’t in the competition, but even so, it’s one win in seven on the road for Arteta, a record he’ll know must improve considerably.

Good evening and welcome to our live coverage of Sporting CP vs Arsenal in the Champions League - a big night for the Gunners in trying to get their automatic qualification hopes back on track.

They are only a couple of points adrift of the top eight ahead of this week’s round of games, but with only three more matches to play after tonight, they can’t afford to lose much more ground if they don’t want to head into the playoffs.