Arsenal qualified for knockout stages in 'Convincing way' says Mikel Arteta

Arsenal secured progression into the knockout stages of the Champions League after a 6-0 thumping of RC Lens, and manager Mikel Arteta was happy with how his team performed.

Arsenal's 6-0 win over RC Lens was as convincing as one could have hoped form prior to the game, and in a 14-minute spell, the Gunners slammed on four goals as Kai Havertz scored his second goal in as many games.

It was one way traffic for most of the first half as Lens struggled to get anything going as Arsenal looked to be back to its devastating best.

For manager Mikel Arteta, while the win was good, the manner in which his team secured the three points was more impressive.

"I didn’t even dream like this, but we had the chance to qualify today and become top of the group and we’ve done it in a really convincing way against a really good side," Arteta said via arsenal.com. "I think the team right from the beginning showed a lot of aggression and determination to go for the game, everything happened in the right way, especially in the first 30 minutes and that was really helpful to win the game."

With Arsenal really failing to hit the strides of last season, the win over Lens looked like the "old Arsenal" as devastating football returned to the Emirates.

The Gunners will now have to put their Champions League exploits to one side for the next three weeks as the Premier League takes center stage before a trip away to PSV to finish the group stage and as Arteta alludes to, how the team has performed at home in the competition is something that he sees as a big positive.

"It’s a [sic] great that we are able to win in this way, but I think consistently we have shown at home not to concede any goals, and score a lot of goals, that’s a really positive factor," Arteta said. "Those players need to have those experiences, and believe that we can do it against big opponents, now let’s wait, we have to park it and in February we will know who we are facing and let’s see how we are in that moment."

Arsenal now will get to focus on the Premier League as Wolves, Luton Town and Aston Villa are next up on the schedule as it looks to maintain its lead in the league standings.

It will be anything but easy, however if the performance against Lens is anything to go by, then it will take something to stop this Arsenal team if it gets into the groove.