Arsenal knew they would beat Olympiacos in Champions League, insists Petr Cech

Arsene Wenger has hailed Olivier Giroud after the striker netted a hat-trick in Arsenal’s 3-0 win over Olympiakos.

Giroud, 29, scored his first ever hat trick for Arsenal on Wednesday as Arsene Wenger’s injury-hit side rose to the occasion in Greece and reached the knockout stages for the 16th year running. We had the chance to prove to everyone we have the qualities of being a top team in the Champions League.

“Competition is very important in the big teams – it makes players stronger and that is what happened”, the midfielder Flamini said.

“Maybe it is a lucky year for us in the Champions League, you never know”.

“I’m very proud of the team because we needed to be right mentally and tactically and at 2-0 we needed to push for a third because it was risky”.

“That’s what you want going into the Christmas period because it is the time the Premier League really maps out where you are going to be at the end of it. So come January, we will see how it goes. It was a complete team performance”, he said.

Time and again, Campbell showed strength to hold off his marker and vision to slide in Giroud to offer hope to Arsenal fans that they have the makings of a fine strike partnership. You’ve seen teams struggle when they should go through and should be winning.

“In the second half I think we were influenced the second goal of Arsenal”.

Martin Keown says Olivier Giroud can create history with Arsenal.

They were also hammered 5-1 by group winners Bayern Munich, but recovered to qualify with an accomplished display in Greece. I’ve always defended his character and he has shown it again today. “They didn’t want to go to the Europa League and especially after the last defeat at home, a second successive defeat would have been an attack to their pride”. The first goal was a good ball from Aaron.

“It was a very hard game but they were fantastic and if Arsenal can reproduce that form they can take on anybody”. We knew what we had to do, we knew we had to score more than two goals, but we always felt that if we kept a clean sheet then we would win. We had the opportunities to score but our goal was at risk. It was not so easy tonight in this stadium in this atmosphere and we’re really pleased to have done it now.