Arsenal defender Sokratis Papastathopoulos insists that there is no consideration to his end of the season without qualifying for the Champions League and achieving the target for which he joined Arsenal last summer in first place.
The Gunners got better of Valencia at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday night in the first leg of Europa League’s semi-final fixture.
Valencia surprisingly started better at emirates with Mouctar Diakhaby giving them an early lead, which was cancelled by Alexandre Lacazette’s first half brace followed by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s last minute third one giving some breathing space to Unai Emery & his Co. when they travel to Spain next week.
Talking about Europa League’s most successful manager Unai Emery, with three successive Premier League defeats making Arsenal’s chances of top four tough indeed, now travels to his former club Valencia to make sure Arsenal plays that final in BAKU.
Champions League qualification was one of the key tasks when he took over the reigns from Arsene Wenger and Sokratis is not considering anything else as an option.
“At this moment I believe and I think only this – to play in the Champions League,” the summer arrival from Borussia Dortmund said.
“We can go to the final and why not win the Europa League.
“Firstly we want to to play in the Champions League. Of course I came here because I would like to play in the Champions League, I didn’t come here to play in the Europa League.
“This is the point, our manager and the staff behind him help us every day, we work a lot with the training, the video, we analyse everything and I hope in the end we are right.”
Arsenal having lost four of their last five League games, sit couple of points behind Chelsea, who also are in contention for a place in Europa League finals.
Arsenal shipped in ten goals in those games, highlighting their defensive crisis once again with Unai Emery coming out to defend under-fire defender Shkodran Mustafi.
Although, Sokratis admits that some of the criticism aimed at the squad has been justified but that anyone in the ranks can make mistakes and none of the players are affected psychologically by it.
“Of course, when you play at a team like Arsenal and you lose three games of course you hear critics and you have to improve,” he added.
“We are here to improve, to give the best for the club, for the fans and for us also.
“I think that the biggest point is that we have to stay focused. We are a big family and we are all together, we stay all together. In one week, for example, (Laurent) Koscielny makes a mistake or I make a mistake or Mustafi the same, Nacho (Monreal) too.
“We are people and not robots. Of course we have to improve and we have every game to give 100 per cent and I think the critics are good to hear, to improve, but they do not touch us mentally.”
