Jack Wilshere had praise for Borussia Dortmund after Tuesday night's defeat at Emirates Stadium - but he is still confident that Arsenal will qualify from Group F.
Last season's beaten finalists beat the Gunners 2-1 thanks to a late goal from Robert Lewandowski, while Napoli beat Marseille in France. That leaves Arsenal, Dortmund and Napoli level on six points with three games to play.
Wilshere and company head to Germany next for the return game against a Dortmund side he rates highly.
"They've got a good team shape and it's hard to play through the lines. We want to get Mesut on the ball and play through to Giroud but they made it difficult for us. Fair play to them"
"They are a good team, they wanted to play and they are difficult to break down," Wilshere told Arsenal Player. "They've got a good team shape and it's hard to play through the lines. We want to get Mesut on the ball and play through to Giroud but they made it difficult for us. Fair play to them.
"They are good at that [counter-attacking], they are good at soaking up the pressure and hitting on the break and it [the winner] was a goal we would have been proud of, to be fair. It was a difficult game and in the end a draw might have been fair, but they got the goal at the end. We have to deal with that and bounce back.
"Everything was going right for us and when they scored early it was a bit of a setback. We bounced back, we got a good goal with a great cross from Bac and Giroud put it in. At 1-1 the game was there for the taking and we tried and tried but they hit us on the break.
"There are three games left, and nine points to play for, so it's still in our hands. We know what we have to do. We've got a difficult game away to Dortmund next. It will be a hostile atmosphere but we've been there before and I thought we were unlucky not to win there. We've got the players to do it, we have to regroup and show our spirit now."
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.