Walcott competition helped Giroud – Flamini

Maxwel Cornet and Alexandre Lacazette scored to give already eliminated Lyon a consolation win, although it was all academic for Valencia anyway as Gent’s 2-1 victory at home to Zenit St Petersburg took them through.

Arsenal midfielder Mathieu Flamini praised Olivier Giroud and said Theo Walcott’s form had helped the striker improve.

“He showed skill and character…”

“He shows slowly, game by game, that he has the talent to do it”, he said.

Qualification to this season’s round of 16 has been dubbed Arsenal’s greatest-ever Champions League resurgence, losing their opening two group matches before a win over Bayern Munich catapulted their comeback.

After this victory, Arsenal moved to the second place in their Champions League group, what means that Arsene Wenger’s side will be playing in the knockout stages of the competition.

Yet it was the way in which the Gunners got the result they needed despite a spate of recent injuries that had Wenger purring.

Describing Arsenal as a “real” team, Arsenal further said that it was an outstanding performance and a fantastic achievement for the team as a whole.

“The kind of performance we produced in a very heated atmosphere was flawless – on the mental front and the tactical side as well”.

Giroud saw the Gunners through with a clinical hat-trick comprising of a header, a low shot and a penalty.

Come the hour come the man and this time it was often-derided Olivier Giroud who did the job with a hat-trick. “It’s the Champions League, so whoever you get in the draw is going to be hard because you’ve seen teams struggle when they should go through and should be winning”.

“Maybe [it was my best performance for Arsenal], because I scored three goals”, Giroud added.

Giroud became the seventh Arsenal player to reach double figures for goals in the Champions League. We weren’t thinking about the Europa at the start of the game, we always felt we would go through, we believed we would win the game and stay in this competition.

“Nine times out of 10 you are out (after such a poor start)”.

In terms of his own fitness, Walcott admits he is still not back to his best having been out since picking up a calf injury early on in the 3-0 Capital One Cup defeat at Sheffield Wednesday.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger believes Joel Campbell is proving himself to be a very talented attacking player.