Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho would like to see Olympiacos progress to the last 16 of the Champions League at Arsenal’s expense.
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The Gunners eased to a 3-0 victory over Dynamo Zagreb on Tuesday with the type of commanding display they required but lacked in September when the tone for the campaign was set by a damaging defeat in Croatia in the group opener.
Bayern Munich tore apart Greek side Olimpiacos 4-0 at the Allianz Arena to confirm their place in the next stage of the competition.
“What is most important is the quality of the player and, on that front, even for example we paid high money for Ozil and Alexis – the highest we’ve ever paid – but I don’t regret it for a second”.
“So we are going into a play-off situation and we know what we need to get so hopefully we will be ready for that”.
“What we wanted was to come out of this game with a chance to qualify”, he said.
It’s a relief for Wenger, who had to confirm that Francis Coquelin will be out for at least two months a knee injury following the game against Westbrom, as reported by the website.
Wenger had planned to take Sanchez off but an injury scare to Hector Bellerin prevented him from doing so.
Wenger was thinking of substituting him after Arsenal went 3-0 up but had reporters laughing when he said, tongue-in-cheek: “I didn’t take him off because a break makes him exhausted”.
Wenger said: “Walcott goes through a few tests and steps but the first one was successful”.
“We needed to win”.
Arsenal’s chances have been revived after they looked slim following their 5-1 thrashing away to Bayern on a night when Olympiakos beat Dinamo Zagreb to strengthen their position. It’s not easy to play against such quality players.
They will fight it out for top spot on December 9 at Stamford Bridge in London, while Kiev, who have eight points, have an outside chance of qualifying as they host Maccabi in Ukraine on the same day.
Sanchez got his second with about 20 minutes to go, as Joel Campbell produced a terrific angled through-ball which saw Sanchez time his run perfectly to round the Zagreb goalkeeper.
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“I’m sure they can go through”.
