Arsenal FC

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• Founded:1886
• Manager:Arsene Wenger

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United test excites Wenger

16 Apr 2009 - 08:30:45

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Arsene Wenger is excited about the prospect of playing Manchester United in the semi-finals of the Champions League after his Arsenal team eased past Villarreal in the last eight of the competition on Wednesday.

The Gunners came from behind in last week's first leg against the Yellow Submarine to draw 1-1 but were easy 3-0 victors in the second leg thanks to goals by Theo Walcott, Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie.

With most of his star players now fully recovered from injury, Wenger believes his team is peaking at exactly the right time.

He said: "I believe that both Arsenal and United always produce very exciting games. Both teams like to go forward so it will be a promising semi-final. We are up for the challenge and it will be very interesting.

"It is always difficult to play an English team because of their quality. Psychologically it is not difficult but at the moment I believe that if you want to go far you have to play an English team at some stage.

"It will be a test, but it is a challenge which we relish and we are excited about that. But before Man United, the most important match is the Chelsea game.

"We have to focus on the short-term targets, and that is now Chelsea for us. I would not like to speculate on any weakness of Man United.

"We expect them to be strong on the day they play against us, and that should encourage us to be at our best and that is how we will try to play the game.

"We have games before we play Man United, so let's try to continue our run, and start with Chelsea. We are still super-outsiders.

"We have confidence and that is down to the slow progress we have accumulated from game to game in the championship.

"Confidence transfers from one competition to the other and that's why we cannot choose any competition and just want to play well in every single competition."