Mesut Ozil is proud of his Arsenal teammates.

The German World Cup winner, with whom Paul Scholes has developed something of an unhealthy obsession, has been speaking to Arsenal,com about Tuesday night and, although disappointed to go out, sees much to be happy about.

Coming in for criticism once again, despite putting in a performance that saw him ranked (along with Aaron Ramsey) as one of the best players from the second legs (all games), Ozil has been working hard to improve the weaker areas of his game including beefing up in the gym.

Revealing recently that he knows talent alone is not enough to be successful in the Premier League, Ozil is becoming something of a cheerleader for this team, a position that is at odds with the assertion of some pundits that he doesn’t seem to care.

Ozil said “I want to praise the whole team.

“We dominated the whole game there and gave everything. We couldn’t find that last goal but we can be proud of ourselves.

“We knew that Monaco would make it difficult for us by playing defensively. We dealt with that very well and created a number of opportunities, that we unfortunately didn’t convert.

“We can be satisfied with that. We’ve got lots of important games coming up, especially in the FA Cup, where we’re in the semi-finals again.

“In the Premier League everything is possible and we have to look forward now. We have important games in front of us that we want to be successful in.”

In sparkling form since his return from the injury that sidelined him for three months, we’ve covered Ozil and the ridiculous stick he gets from the media at length.

And we’ll keep covering it until people stop being stupid.