Standard's chance to make Arsenal pay

R. Standard de Liège make their UEFA Champions League group-stage debut seeking revenge on their Matchday 1 opponents. Arsenal FC inflicted their worst result in UEFA club competition, a 7-0 home defeat in the second round of the 1993/94 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup – featuring seven different scorers – that completed a 10-0 aggregate loss.

Previous meetings
• Standard lost their first five competitive games against English opposition but have won two and drawn two of the last five.

• Arsenal have faced only one other side from Belgium in UEFA club competition, KFC Winterslag, in the 1981/82 UEFA Cup second round and went out on away goals after a 2-2 aggregate draw.

Match background
• Arsenal reached last season's UEFA Champions League semi-finals – the ninth successive campaign they have advanced from the initial group stage – bowing out to Manchester United FC 4-1 on aggregate after losing 1-0 away and 3-1 at home. It was the second successive season they had departed at the hands of Premier League rivals, Liverpool FC beating them in the previous year's quarter-finals.

• Twelve months ago the Gunners began with a 1-1 draw away to FC Dynamo Kyiv, ending a run of four successive Matchday 1 wins. They won 5-2 at Fenerbahçe SK but Arsenal's away form was generally below par, losing 2-0 against FC Porto, 1-0 at AS Roma in the first knockout round and then drawing 1-1 with Villarreal CF in the quarter-finals.

• Arsène Wenger's side qualified for the group stage with a 5-1 aggregate victory over Celtic FC in the play-off round, winning 2-0 in Glasgow through William Gallas and a Gary Caldwell own goal before confirming progress with second-leg goals from Eduardo, Emmanuel Eboué and Andrei Arshavin.

Team ties
• Arsenal's Thomas Vermaelen will come up against Belgian international colleagues Axel Witsel and Steven Defour.

• Vermaelen and Defour were opponents of Arsenal's Cesc Fàbregas when Spain beat Belgium 5-0 in a FIFA World Cup qualifier earlier this month. All three – and Witsel – were also involved on 15 October 2008 when Spain won the group game in Brussels 2-1.

• Vermaelen and Defour played in a 2-0 friendly defeat against the Czech Republic on 7 February 2007. Tomáš Rosický was on the winning side.

• Vermaelen and Defour were in the Belgium side that beat Serbia 3-2 in a UEFA EURO 2008™ qualifier in Brussels on 22 August 2007, Milan Jovanović coming on as a second-half substitute for the losing team.

• Standard defender Ricardo Rocha was an unused substitute as Tottenham Hotspur FC lost 3-1 to Arsenal in the Premier League on 15 September 2007.