Arsenal are safely into the quarter-finals of the Champions League and Matt Upson believes it was the perfect warm up for this weekend’s EFL Cup final.
The Gunners scored two wonderful goals through Eberechi Eze and Declan Rice to march on and continue their unbeaten run in Europe.
Sporting Lisbon await in the next round but first, they meet Man City in the cup final. And according to former Arsenal man Matt Upson, the performance against Leverkusen ticked all the boxes.
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Arsenal getting into the next round was the most important thing tonight but the performance also had a lot to admire about it.
Indeed, Upson believes Mikel Arteta will be delighted with every aspect.
“This is most the ideal win and performance for Arsenal ahead of this weekend’s final. It’s been a good night from them. Mikel Arteta will definitely be happy with that,” Upson commented for the BBC.
“Such a solid performance, it had everything you’d expect from them this season It had these two absolute class goals, real Champions League performance to separate the teams. They were absolutely the winning team and it was a real Champions League performance.
“Arsenal aren’t playing PSG or Real Madrid yet but clashing against a team like that will be very, very interesting.”
Arsenal’s performance was very much that of a team who know how to win games of football and they brought what they’ve done in the league all season to European competition.
One blot on the night was a potential injury to Eberechi Eze.
However, Eze told the media he hopes to be fine for the weekend.
“Yeah, I’m alright, I’ll be ok,” Eze confirmed after the game.
Hopefully, that is the case. The £60m signing has hit form at the right time and on the big Wembley pitch this weekend, could be one of Arsenal’s key players.
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