Vitoria head coach Ivo Vieira almost led his side to a memorable victory at Arsenal last month, but is expecting a tougher test when their Europa League opponents visit Guimaraes on Wednesday.
The Primeira Liga team twice took the lead at the Emirates Stadium in the reverse fixture before Nicolas Pepe netted two free-kicks to ensure Arsenal maintained their perfect Group F start with a 3-2 win.
The Portugese team’s performance will have given plenty of their supporters hope of a famous result on Wednesday at the Estadio D. Afonso Henriques, which hosted both of England’s Nations League Finals matches in the summer.
The game kicks off at 15:50 GMT with Vitoria unable to play on Thursday – the same night near-neighbours Braga and Porto are in action – and a clash with Wednesday’s later Champions League fixtures also needs to be avoided.
And Vieira has warned anyone harbouring expectations of a similar game to his side’s last clash with Arsenal that it will be more difficult this time around.
“Our goal is to win,” Vieira told reporters at his pre-match press conference. “But my expectation is that this game will be more difficult for the zeal that was created and for the expectation that we could have won and it did not happen.
“That has to give us a lot of balance to not be ‘thirsty’ for the win and allow Arsenal in transition to make the game complicated for us.”
Meanwhile, Bruno Duarte, the Vitoria forward who put the visitors in front for the second time a fortnight ago, insists they have to do better than simply “play well” if they want to pull off the shock this time.
“It is not enough to play well to defeat a big opponent,” he said. “We have to be as careful as possible.
“We cannot concede goals and we have to be prepared to score our own. Plenty of good work is being done to try and find the victory.”
