Sokratis Papastathopoulos insists he did not come to Arsenal for any more than one season of Europa League football as Unai Emery's side battle to ensure their qualification for the Champions League.
Ahead of Sunday's home game against Brighton Arsenal are a point off fourth-placed Chelsea with two games remaining. After an impressive 3-1 home win over Valencia in the first leg of the semi final it appears increasingly likely that their best chance of qualifying comes in the Europa League, whose victors will play in next season's Champions League.
Arsenal have been out of the competition for two seasons and the ramifications, both on and off the pitch, of not making it for a third season could be huge, with Unai Emery facing a decreased transfer budget of less than £50million and commercial deals potentially being damaged in the long term.
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Sokratis says the Arsenal dressing room are convinced that they are capable of making it back into the Champions League one way or another and that they know the competition is where their club belongs.
"The manager tries every day to give the best to us, the team and firstly we want to to play in the Champions League," Sokratis told football.london. "Of course I came here because I would like to play in the Champions League.
"I didn't come here to play in the Europa League.
"This is the point, our manager and the staff behind him help us every day, we work a lot with the training, the video, we analyse everything and I hope in the end we are right."
Arsenal had seemed to be in the driving seat for a top four finish in the Premier League but three defeats in the space of a week to Crystal Palace, Wolves and Leicester handed the initiative to Chelsea.
Sokratis added: "I think we deserve [to be in the Champions League] of course. Last week was not good, but we have to think that okay, three games we played really bad - but also we have to think what we did over the whole eight months.
"It is not about three games putting everything out. This is football.
"Of course you can win, you can lose. We had to win the games and until the end we have to also win all the games. But we have to know that it is not easy."
Arsenal had appeared to be facing an uphill battle to qualify for the final after Mouctar Diakhaby's 11th minute header earned Valencia a crucial away lead but two goals from Alexandre Lacazette ensured the Gunners had the lead at the break.
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Their chances of securing qualification at the Mestalla next week looked to be far more in the balance until the final seconds of normal time, when Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang volleyed in their third from Sead Kolasinac's cross.
"It is more important, but there is still a lot of work to do," Sokratis said. "There are still 90 minutes left.
"Of course, today I think we have given a good response to the last three games that we were very bad in. And we have to keep this form for Sunday and next week.
"It was very difficult because they scored first from the corner. It was a difficult situation.
"They also had a chance after two minutes, but after 10, 15 minutes we played much better and we deserved this win."
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