Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger said he would prefer to avoid a Europa League quarter-final against Atletico Madrid after beating AC Milan in the last 16.<\/p>\n
England striker Danny Welbeck scored twice – either side of a long-range strike from Granit Xhaka – as the\u00a0Gunners won the second leg 3-1.<\/p>\n
Hakan Calhanoglu had opened the scoring for Milan, but the Italian side fell to a 5-1 aggregate defeat.<\/p>\n
“We would certainly want to avoid Atletico Madrid,” said Wenger.<\/p>\n
The draw for the quarter-finals – which features teams from eight countries – will take place on Friday at 12:00 GMT.<\/p>\n
This was Arsenal’s third win in a week after their first-leg victory in Milan and Sunday’s 3-0\u00a0Premier League defeat of Watford.<\/p>\n
Prior to victory at the San Siro, the Gunners had lost four successive games in all competitions.<\/p>\n
“It’s much better. We needed that to recover from our results,” Wenger said.<\/p>\n
“It shows how the team has responded. We had a difficult game but in the end we won it. If we have the results and the way to play football, the crowds will be behind us.”<\/p>\n
Turkish international Calhanoglu produced a stunning finish from 30 yards to give the Italians the lead.<\/p>\n
The Gunners levelled within four minutes through Welbeck, who was controversially awarded a penalty after going down under minimal contact from Ricardo Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
Xhaka’s long-range effort bobbled into the net for Arsenal’s second after poor goalkeeping by Milan’s highly rated Gianluigi Donnarumma, before Welbeck headed in a third.<\/p>\n
“It was an open game. We played backwards a bit too much in the first half to protect the result. We played a very good side,” said Wenger.<\/p>\n
“We have to improve defensively, but overall we are team with technical quality which is more attack-minded.<\/p>\n
“We struggle a bit more when we have to defend. We finished the game more compact and more solid.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger said he would prefer to avoid a Europa League quarter-final against Atletico Madrid after beating AC Milan in the last 16. England striker Danny Welbeck scored twice – either side of a long-range strike from Granit Xhaka – as the\u00a0Gunners won the second leg 3-1. Hakan Calhanoglu had opened the scoring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":73980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[7800,17954,396,2749],"class_list":["post-410218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-athletico-madrid","tag-european-football","tag-football","tag-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}