Arsene Wenger says their 2-0 win in Milan restores belief to the squad after a nightmare week as Arsenal moved into 4/1 second favourites for the Europa League.
Wenger was delighted to see his Arsenal side emerge from a nightmare run to beat Milan 2-0 and keep hope of winning the Europa League alive.
Arsenal are now 4/1 second favourites to win the Europa League.
Wenger has admitted that winning the competition is now the only way Arsenal can get back into the Champions League, and victory in Milan has gone a long way to putting them into the quarter-finals.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan's and Aaron Ramsey gave the Gunners a superb win at San Siro and now Wenger hopes the win can lift the gloom over his squad.
Wenger compared Arsenal's recent bad form to a "half knocked-down" boxer and was pleased with his side's response to their run of four successive losses.
"It's like a boxing match...when you're knocked down it's hard to recover." 👊
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) March 8, 2018
Arsene Wenger praises his side's victory after a "nightmare week." pic.twitter.com/BqeFPjIjoS
He said: "It has been a nightmare week but it was a good result but it is not qualification, so we have to finish the job at home.
"The result will lift the belief in the team again. When you lose three games in six days, it's always very difficult. We want to keep our focus and finish the job next week. That's what the target is.
"Overall, I am happy with our spirit and the response we gave. We defended with resilience and until the end. We did that well tonight.
"(In the second half) our pace dropped but I think it is down to the fact we've played four games in 10 days - four intense games.
"I think that when we play a cup final on Sunday and you lose it, it is hard psychologically to digest that in three or four days and we had games on the bounce straight away. Like a boxing match, when you are half knocked-down and another (punch) comes again, and that's what happened to us.
"But at some stage, you have to respond with your pride and your desire that you have to quality to win the game and that's what we did."
Milan entered the tie having not lost in 2018 and with a run of six successive clean sheets, and although it's a huge blow, manager Gennaro Gattuso insists his side are not finished.
"Never say never," he said.
"We go there and we play. We showed that Milan can perform as a good team. We could have scored two goals. We will go there and we will play our match.
"To play in Europe is different to playing in Italy. We should not lose our confidence, we should go forward."
