A result even ardent Arsenal fans never saw coming, and Nigel Winterburn certainly didn’t.
“I thought Arsenal could get a result, that's for sure, but I think if anyone told you 7-1, they'd be lying! And coming off the back of a couple of games where they hadn't scored a goal. I loved the performance in terms of the movement up front, trying to break the defensive lines of PSV. I thought the movement through those front areas was absolutely superb.
"In the end we just completely destroyed them. I certainly don't think the PSV manager saw that coming, the way he was looking afterwards and I'm not sure a lot of Arsenal supporters saw it coming, but it was a brilliant performance,” says Winterburn who played over 400 games for Arsenal during a 13-year period.
Talking to Tribalfootball of behalf of William Hill, Winterburn believes The Gunners have made teams take notice with that result.
“Our history in the Champions League isn't the best. We got to the final in ’06 but apart from that it’s a lot of quarterfinals or round of 16 for us, so the pedigree of the teams in it and the history of those teams winning the Champions League is far superior to ours. But that doesn't mean you don’t have a chance. We won't be favourites but I think we might have made some teams sit up a little because people thought we were just having a little bit of a dip, and rightly so. Then, all of a sudden, we've come back with a performance like that.”
Manchester United at Old Trafford is later today, which was a feisty clash in a lot of the 13 years Winterburn played for Arsenal. Not least 35 years ago when an almighty brawl broke out during a game in Manchester. Hugely entertaining, but most likely not something we’ll see on Sunday.
“The game's not as physical now and it's probably not as acceptable now as well. Through that period that I played the intensity built and built between United and Arsenal. It was huge. But there's still a lot of pride at stake with the history of the two clubs against each other. If something happens within the game, we might see one or two little things. But it certainly won't have that intense build up that we've probably been used to.
“Both managers are going to tell you that they are going full tilt at this game. They will want to win and I fully understand that. As a manager or a player, you never go out in a game thinking, 'oh, it doesn't matter because the next game is more important'.
"Momentum in football is huge. United will be sick and tired of everyone telling them this is the worst Man United team and what not and Arsenal will want to try and finish really strongly. I believe the title is Liverpool's so we're playing for second but you're never going to hear Mikel Arteta say that. He’ll be pushing them as hard as he can.”