I was Nervous Before Sunderland Game – Wenger

Tottenham star Cristien Erikson was quoted by the Metro as saying: “I used to watch him when I was at Ajax and he was at Real Madrid. It is a different situation, we have to go out there and win 2-0 and that will be enough”.

With the possibility of topping the Premier League table with a win at home against 17th place Sunderland, Arsenal went out looking for an early lead with many of their injured stars sitting out.

That was on own-goal by Giroud that levelled the score at 1-1 after Joel Campbell had put Arsenal ahead in the 33rd minute, running onto a defence-splitting pass from German World Cup victor Mesut Ozil to score from 10 metres.

They can progress to the knockout stages of the Champions League at Olympiakos on Wednesday – but Ozil warned that would be tough. We want to win this game and get through to the next round.

“We know that we have a lot of quality up front”.

Q: How hard will the Olympiacos game be? “For me our job is to win the next game and do what is requested”, Wenger told the official Arsenal website.

The difference is Arsenal had already qualified for the knock-out rounds on those previous visits and Wenger knows the stakes are higher this time around.

He said: “This season is the strongest season I’ve played”.

Arsenal face a do-or-die Champions League Group F tie in Greece and Ozil said his team has “the quality to beat them and our goal is not to even think about going out of the competition”.

The Wales midfielder added: “We have been here a few times before”.

“We know what is expected and we have studied Olympiakos”.

“They were risky with Fletcher and Watmore, and their full backs could have exposed us, so it was important not to concede the second goal and I believe it was also important to get behind their midfield, behind Ola Toivonen and M’Vila and to find space in between their centre backs”.