Giroud can have badly off-colour days – he endured a personal nightmare in the Champions League last-16, first leg home loss to Monaco last season – and they have not helped his cause. “We had a flawless performance on the mental front and the tactical side”. Giroud was happy as it shows that maybe this year we do have some real depth to the squad. We needed something special to come back like we did and tonight we needed a complete team performance.
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Yes, certainly because we needed a ideal performance to score without conceding.
“I’m proud of the consistency because it demands a lot of effort every day and that’s what it’s about”, Wenger added.
Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsey, left, challenges for the ball with Olympiakos’ Kostas Fortounis during a Champions League Group F soccer match between Olympiakos and Arsenal at the Georgios Karaiskakis stadium in Piraeus port, near Athens, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015.
In essence, any win apart from 1-0 or 2-1 will ensure progression for Arsene Wenger’s side, who are 40/1 to go all the way in the competition and 6/1 to reach the last four.
This time it was great work from Joel Campbell, once a loanee at Olympiacos, as he controlled an Ozil pass before producing the flawless pass into Giroud for him to sweep home.
Giroud completed his hat-trick on the 67th minute by converting the penalty from an Omar Elabdellaoui handball into his and Arsenal’s third goal on the night. Going in one goal to the good at the break was a fine start, with just one more needed to see Arsenal over the line.
The draw for the round of 16 takes place on Monday and Arsenal will face either Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Wolfsburg or Zenit St Petersburg. Punters can get odds of 9/5 for the North Londoners to finish in the top two, whilst Olympiacos are fancied at 2/5 to condemn the 2006 Champions League runners-up to the Europa League. Needing a win by two goals or by scoring three or more goals, Arsenal’s task is not an enviable one. These kinds of performances make the team stronger.
“I think competition is very important in the big teams. We tried to play our game in between the lines and we created chances to score, so we are pleased as it was not so easy and we were in a hard position.” .
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“It is true that at 2-0 we meant to take risks, to keep trying”. “But the first goal affected the rest of the match”. Find us on Facebook too!
