Arsenal are the team to avoid in the Champions League, says Theo Walcott

Theo Walcott claims Arsenal have become the team to avoid in Monday’s draw for the Champions League round of 16 following the remarkable 3-0 victory against Olympiakos which saved Arsene Wenger’s team from the ignominy of the Europa League.

With Olivier Giroud scoring a hat-trick in Athens, Arsenal secured qualification as runners-up to Bayern Munich in Group F to extend the club’s record of progressing to the knock-out stages for a sixteenth successive campaign.

Monday’s draw will present the usual nightmare scenario of a tie against the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid or Atletico Madrid, combined with a potentially less hazardous pairing with Wolsburg or Zenit Saint Petersburg.

Arsenal have fallen short against the heavyweights of Barcelona and Bayern, as well as the comparative minnows of Monaco, in recent seasons, but Walcott believes the manner of victory in Athens will make Wenger’s team an unwanted opponent for even the biggest clubs on Monday.

“I’m sure none of them would like to play us after that result,” Walcott said. “It’s the Champions League, so whoever you get in the draw is going to be difficult because you’ve seen teams struggle when they should go through and should be winning.

“It doesn’t matter who we get, if we all contribute and play like that we did against Olympiakos, we can beat anyone on our day.

“If we get a few of our players back as well then our squad will be even stronger than it is now.”

Having been eliminated by Monaco last season, Arsenal’s reputation as serial chokers in the knock-out stages has become a burden which qualification enables them to overcome.

But Walcott admits that, having allowed complacency to set in against Monaco, the lessons will be learned if Arsenal are paired with Zenit or Wolfsburg – Manchester United’s conquerors in Germany on Tuesday.

“Whoever we end up playing, we must respect them,” Walcott said. “Monaco, obviously, we didn’t respect them at all.

“If we get the likes of Wolfsburg - we played them in the Emirates Cup - it will be a completely different ball game because they had a great result against Manchester United.

“But who knows until the draw is done?

“Avoiding the Europa League wasn’t in our mindset at all, though, against Olympiakos. We weren’t thinking about the Europa at the start of the game, we always felt we would go through, we believed we would win the game and stay in this competition.

“The Champions League is where we want to be and all the guys worked tremendously hard to make this happen.”

Arsenal’s victory in Greece, which came with the rare bonus of no further injuries to Wenger’s threadbare squad, will go down as one of the most memorable in the club’s recent history due to the high stakes involved and risk of demotion to the Europa League.

And Walcott claims that the inner-belief of the squad was key to securing the win, described by Wenger as the ‘greatest escape,’ which was required to overhaul Olympiakos to climb into second position in the group.

“We made it so difficult for ourselves and no-one really gave us any chance,” Walcott said. “But the attitude in that dressing room was fantastic.

“We knew what we had to do, we knew we had to score more than two goals, but we always felt that if we kept a clean sheet then we would win.

“The great thing with this game compared to Monaco last season was that we were very patient, with the build -up play.

“Even when we scored, we didn’t go all-out attack. We were calm and relaxed because there was plenty of time.

“We took our chances and Olivier was our man.”