The Premier League side shook off the noisy atmosphere at the Karaiskakis Stadium to silence the home fans with three goals by Olivier Giroud and get the result it needed, while the Reds clearly cracked under the pressure of the occasion.
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France forward Olivier Giroud plundered a hat-trick as Arsenal beat Olympiacos 3-0 in Athens to qualify for the last 16 of the Champions League from Group F ahead of the Greek team.
While Giroud was celebrated, many continued to poke fun at Manchester United’s failure at Wolfsburg on a night when Arsenal and Chelsea sealed their place alongside Manchester City in the knockout stages. “We needed something special to come back like we did and tonight we needed a complete team performance”, added Wenger.
Wenger allowed his side to slip into such a mess, and with Bayern Munich in the group, Arsenal will now not win the group and can only hope to scrape into the next round.
“Overall if you look at the numbers since the start of the Champions League group stage, we have played with 10 men in Zagreb, we scored an own goal at home to Olympiacos. It will be a cup final and we have to win to continue in Champions League”.
Arsenal entered Wednesday’s Champions League group finale with a simple task but one not simple to execute: Win at Olympiakos by two goals (or win by one while scoring at least four goals).
Omar Elabdellaoui tried to make a sliding intervention to block Nacho Monreal’s goalbound shot, but the ball instead struck the Norwegian’s outstretched arm and Giroud calmly tucked away the resultant spot-kick to seal his hat-trick.
“The guys who replaced injured players last week-end against Sunderland did their job, like Joel ( Campbell)”.
The first time these sides met, Arsenal imploded at home, losing 3-2 and looking like a team on its way out. Not many people gave us a chance.
It is becoming a bit of a ritual not only that Arsenal and Olympiakos are opposition in the Champions League group phase, but that they square off in Greece in the final match of this stage of the competition.
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Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsey, left, challenges for the ball with… Due to a number of injury problems they were written off as they searched for a win by a two-goal margin that would see them through. I think it’s that we focus on the performance and the goals will come if we play well, so let’s focus on that ideally. “They want to play on the counter-attack but we can’t concede goals like we did before again”, Ozil said. He got all of the big decisions correct, and was right to book Fortounis for diving inside the box, before giving Arsenal a penalty for a handball.
