Arsenal’s Trossard says Leverkusen win ideal ahead of League Cup final

Arsenal’s Champions League win over Bayer Leverkusen is the perfect preparation for Sunday’s League Cup final with Manchester City, according to forward Leandro Trossard.

While City were knocked out of the elite competition by European football giants Real Madrid, the Gunners eased into the last eight with a 2-0 win over German club Bayer Leverkusen for a 3-1 aggregate victory.

Attention now focuses on Wembley, where Premier League leaders Arsenal will try to complete the first part of what would be an unprecedented quadruple by defeating City for the first major trophy of the English season.

“We’re looking forward to it a lot,” Arsenal winger Trossard told the club’s website.

“It’s one of our objectives as well and I think everyone will be ready for that.

“We’re still competing on every level now and we just need to keep going game by game and every game is very important for us, so we want to try and win every game.”

The 31-year-old Belgium international provided the pass that led to Eberechi Eze to open the scoring against Leverkusen with a thunderous shot from the edge of the box.

“It’s an amazing goal,” said Trossard of the England midfielder’s superb strike.

“You can see his qualities as well, in and around the box, the way he takes that shot with a lot of confidence and how it goes in.

“It’s one of those goals you only score, I don’t know, maybe once or twice in your career. So credit to him and I’m really pleased with that.”

Trossard added: “It was a good performance from us, especially how we dominated that first half with a lot of chances.

“I think we enjoyed it a lot on the pitch, you could see that, it transmitted on to the crowd as well, I think we were very good and it was a perfect one for us.

“We just needed to get the business done and I think we did it in a very good way.”

Declan Rice’s second-half goal helped ensure Arsenal will face Portuguese club Sporting Lisbon in next month’s quarter-finals.