Declan Rice’s incredible brace of free-kicks as well as Mikel Merino’s precise finish sees us head to the Spanish capital next week with a healthy advantage, as we continued our red-hot campaign in front of goal on European nights.

We have now banged in 28 goals in just 11 matches in this season’s competition, and have already easily surpassed our best ever haul in a Champions League season and we now have seven more than our previous best. 

We netted 21 in 2009/10 which saw us beat Porto 5-0 and AZ Alkmaar 4-1, and that tally was matched the following season, aided by a 6-0 success over Braga and beating Shakhtar Donetsk 5-1. We only played eight matches in that 2010/11 campaign, meaning we averaged 2.63 goals per game, as opposed to the 2.55 we currently have this term.

All of those high-scoring victories mentioned came at home, but this season we have also been on fire on our travels as well, with the 5-1 win over Sporting Lisbon and the incredible 7-1 victory against PSV Eindhoven sitting in our top 10 biggest victories in the competition.

While our best-ever total has been surpassed and could be added to next week in the Bernabeu, we are still some distance off the competition record, which was set by Barcelona in 1999/00 when they netted an incredible 45 goals in 16 games, albeit back when the competition had two group stages. 

Our win over Real was the fifth time we’ve netted three or more goals during our run to the quarter-finals, while at the other end of the pitch, our defence has been breached just six times.

What will please Mikel Arteta the most is that we have had 13 different goalscorers in the Champions League this season, with only Borussia Dortmund in 2016/17 (15) and Real Madrid in 2001/02 (14) having more in a single campaign in the competition’s history when you exclude own goals.