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Wenger on Lucas and last-16 draw

16/17: Basel v Arsenal - Lucas

Lucas Perez stole the headlines with a hat-trick in our 4-1 win against Basel at St. Jakob-Park on Tuesday night.

The Spanish forward followed two close-range finishes with a clinical strike into the bottom corner to send us on our way to topping Group A, and Arsène Wenger was quick to single out his summer signing for praise in his post-match press conference.

on Lucas…
The first two looked like quite easy goals, and were what we call tap-ins in England, but they were created by the team and you have to be there to finish. The first goal is a real striker’s goal. He scored more than 20 goals in Spain last season and he has shown why. He has an eye for goal and good movement in the box, which is why he scores.

on a brave team selection…
We had a good start, were quite mobile and technically very agile as well. The speed of our start surprised Basel and it was a convincing performance. Once again our squad system has worked well since the start of the season.

on how pleased he is to finish top and who he wants to avoid…
I don’t even know who we can get because I don’t know the results of the night, but as I told you before, we can still have a difficult draw. It will be difficult but we will have less guilt because we feel we’ve done the job by finishing first, and we play our second game at home. That’s what we wanted. After that, I said that there is not much difference in the draw, certainly not at the moment.

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on his satisfaction at the two results…
I cannot complain. We played some nice football and it’s a nice night for us. We came here and wanted to do the job, to play well and on top of that we were lucky with the Paris Saint-Germain result. It was a positive night.

 

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