Walcott: Arsenal spirits on the rise

Arsenal hero Theo Walcott said his side gained a much-needed morale boost after Tuesday’s 1-0 Champions League play-off win over Udinese.

Walcott’s fourth-minute strike was enough to give Arsene Wenger’s side a slender advantage ahead of next week’s return leg in Italy, although Udinese had several chances to equalise throughout the contest.

The win comes in the same week captain Cesc Fabregas completed a move back to Barcelona, and with rumours of Samir Nasri’s impending switch to Manchester City persisting, it has been far from an ideal start to the season for the north London side.

Asked if the win had given the club a lift, Walcott told Sky Sports: “Yeah of course, but the most important thing was a clean sheet and our defence was solid yet again, just like at the weekend.”

“It’s nice to get the goal, but they’re a strong team and we’re going to find it difficult over there, but we believe if we play the same football we can get the right result.”

Walcott’s comments echoed those of team-mate Aaron Ramsey, who praised Arsenal’s ability to keep their opposition’s attack at bay for the second consecutive game, following on from their 0-0 stalemate at Newcastle United on Saturday.

“I think it was important to keep a clean sheet tonight, but they were a good opposition, it was a difficult test for us, but we came through it and scored a goal,” Ramsey said.

“But it’s still far from over. We’re going over there with a game to go and hopefully we can finish the job off.”

Udinese manager Francesco Guidolin felt his side deserved a better result and rued a spate of missed chances that denied them the luxury of an away goal.

“I think we deserved more in the match, and I believe that we shouldn’t be happy with the final result. We played very well and the final result doesn’t reward us for how we played,” Guidolin said.

“The result penalised us because we didn’t take our chances to score. We lost this match but for the return leg we can fight and we can win. At the Emirates Stadium we could’ve scored four of five goals.”