Players Respond To West Ham Win

A few players have been in front of the press department following our three nil victory over West Ham, and some even had a few Monaco comments.

Starting with Le Coq, he told the Official Site that with the way Arsenal have responded following the Champions League last 16 first leg loss to Monaco, he feels that we have ‘pulled ourselves together’ and are in the right vain of form to turn that result around.

‘It was a big blow when we lost 3-1 at home against Monaco. I don`t think anybody expected that but I think we pulled ourselves together, went to Manchester United in the FA Cup quarter-final and won 2-1 in a big game. It was another great performance against West Ham. Qualifying for the next round looks impossible but you never know in football. Hopefully we can get a great a great result over there and then move on to the next game. There`s quite a lot of things to change after you lose 3-1 at home, but we`ve done that in recent games. We haven`t conceded many goals and we`ve been scoring goals as well. We haven`t lost a game since Monaco and the confidence is high. We`re going to go there with great spirit and I think we can turn this result around.’

Aaron Ramsey was also giving his thoughts following the West Ham win.

Talking properly about the game at the weekend, he explained that Arsenal were always expecting a tough game because the Hammers have had a good season themselves, and they definitely made life difficult for us in the first half – even though we didn’t help ourselves, but he knows the opening goal opened up the game and gave us a foothold on to build on.

‘They have done really well this season, so we expected a tough game, and we certainly got that in the first half. We found them tough to break down but we got the goal at the end of the half and then in the second half it opened up a bit for us and we took full advantage of that. In the end it was a bit more convincing than the result might suggest.’

With Ramsey finding the net himself for our second goal, he said.

‘I called for him (Giroud) to leave it and he did, then I saw him make the run so we played a one-two. I’m just happy that the ball went into the back of the net and we won the game.’

He wasn’t of course going to let the Monaco game go without a comment.

‘We need to score goals. So we will go there and try to score three or more goals and hopefully not concede any. That’s our target and that’s how we will approach it. We had a sloppy first leg and we’ve made it quite difficult for ourselves but it’s not over yet. We are more than capable of scoring three goals. We scored three today and we believe in ourselves. We’ll go into the game believing we can achieve that.’

Calum Chambers explained for himself that keeping another clean sheet was a big boost for the players, and for him we just had to keep the ‘positive vibe’ we have going into the midweek fixture.

‘Getting a clean sheet is always a positive for us defenders and for the whole team. We knew it would be a tough game because West Ham are a good side but I thought we played well, kept strong and got the goals we needed. We`ve got a lot of confidence and we`re building momentum in the league. We`re getting a lot of good results and we`ve just got to keep the positive vibe and keep getting the results we need.’