Arsenal hero Olivier Giroud has expressed his delight at scoring his first hat-trick, in what turned out to be perhaps the most thrilling of circumstances.
The Gunners went into Wednesday evening’s game against Olympiacos knowing that anything other than a 2-0 win or victory in which they achieved a goal margin of 3-2 or better would not be enough. The French international got Arsenal off to a good start inside the half hour mark, putting his side ahead before scoring twice in the second period to send his side through to the knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League for the 16th season in a row.
Giroud admitted that due to his hat-trick, it may go down as his best performance for his side yet.
Maybe [it was my best performance], because I scored three goals. I worked hard for the team and I had the feeling before the game that I would have the chance to score. We have succeeded to complete another clean sheet and it is good for the confidence for the weekend.
It is quite an important [hat-trick] one. It is my first one and I was waiting for that for a long time. I felt the team worked very well as a unit, so we are really pleased with each other.
Despite the north London travellers missing a plethora of first-team regulars from the victory in Greece, Giroud claimed that his side had the quality in depth needed to win.
We feel really pleased tonight, we had a celebration all together after the game. It has been a few years and we miss it. We really wanted to focus on the group stages so we bounced back and we have great team spirit and confidence.
I think we missed a lot of players but this year [with] the new squad and [in] the years before, there has been quality. It [was] a good opportunity. We defended well and we played well. We tried to play our game in between the lines and we created chances to score, so we are pleased tonight as it was not so easy and we were in a difficult position.
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