Thierry Henry believes his former side Arsenal will gain a new confidence that they can go all the way in the Champions League after the 7-1 rout of PSV Eindhoven.
The Gunners blew their Dutch hosts out of the water on Tuesday night, registering the highest ever score in a single away leg by any team in Champions League history with their demolition job.
Much of the discourse had been where the goals might come from with Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus both out for the season, alongside the injuries to Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka.
Needless to say, though, that after seven strikes from six different scorers, Mikel Arteta’s side have goals running right the way through them.
Jurrien Timber, Ethan Nwaneri, Mikel Merino, Martin Odegaard (twice), Leandro Trossard and Riccardo Calafiori were all on target in a massive result for the Gunners, which sees them almost certain to make the last eight, where they will face a huge clash with either Real or Atletico Madrid.
As such, with a much more difficult task on the horizon in the quarter-finals, Henry insisted confident that his old side could use the result to reaffirm to themselves that they have what it takes to win the competition.
Arsenal hammered PSV Eindhoven 7-1 to all but book their spot in the quarter-finals already
Thierry Henry believes the result will give Arsenal the confidence that they can go all the way
‘Yes, they can. I do believe that, this is why I called it. I’m just saying now, show us that you can do that against a good team, with people that are coming back,’ he said on CBS Sports Golazo when asked if Arsenal could challenge one of the Spanish giants.
‘No disrespect to Eindhoven, I really thought it was going to be difficult, especially away from home but they made it look easy. I think they had an outstanding game as you can see with the result.
‘But, we all know that the [Premier] League is over. Apart if something crazy happens but what I’m trying to say is that this game can help maybe to be confident in this competition but (also) the game that you have after, Real Madrid or Atletico.
‘Sometimes I think the path to the final can at times help or not, but if you want to win the competition you have to go through these teams.’
With the Premier League all but Liverpool’s already, Arsenal’s only chance at silverware is the Champions League this term, having also been knocked out of the FA Cup and Carabao Cup.
For all their improvement under Arteta since the start of his reign, they have still only won one FA Cup, finishing runners up in the top-flight the last two seasons.
Yet, to win the Champions League they will have to beat the best sides in Europe with their hands tied behind their backs, given the lack of a striker.
The Gunners have not been to a Champions League final since 2006 when they lost to Barcelona, and have only made one semi-final since then.
Mikel Arteta spoke of the confidence that the thumping result had given his team
The Gunners will play either Jude Bellingham’s Real Madrid or staunch rivals Atletico Madrid
However Tuesday’s win gives them the platform to make just a fourth Champions League quarter-final in 20 years, where they will take on either 15-time winners Real or Diego Simeone’s in-form Atletico Madrid, with Real beating their arch rivals 2-1 in Tuesday’s first leg.
Arteta himself noted that the result had given his side plenty of ‘confidence’, unsurprisingly given the seven goals they scored, as many as their previous five games combined.
‘I really enjoyed the match. Thank you to the players for the performance that they put in. It was a big night for us against a really good side,’ he said.
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‘The way they (PSV) went through in the last round against Juventus (4-3 on aggregate) was really impressive. The manner that we’ve done it, the way we played, the goals that we scored. Thank you because it was a special night.
‘It’s obviously given us a lot of joy, confidence and belief. In football, it’s not what we did three days ago or today, it’s going to be what we do tomorrow.’
When asked if he had seen seven goals coming, he quipped, ‘I knew it was coming’, before adding: ‘No. That’s the beauty of it. Nobody in this room if I give you an envelope and say, “Can you predict what’s going to happen tomorrow and who is going to score?” [would predict that], that’s the beauty of football.
‘You do very well today, put your head down, be humble, analyse how you can improve because the next game is going to be completely different to this one, and nobody can write the script, unfortunately, even if we would like to.’
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