Theo Walcott says Arsenal showed greater desire than Chelsea in the Gunners' 3-0 win over their London rivals on Saturday.
Walcott scored the second goal for the hosts as Arsenal put the game away by half-time to earn their first league victory against Chelsea since 2011. And after their recent struggles against the Blues, Walcott said this result proved that this Arsenal team is ready to compete in the big games.
"We obviously know what's happened in the past, but the past is past. It's all about now, and this team is bright and young and a lot more experienced in these games now," Walcott told BT Sport.
"You could see that 11 men really wanted to win this more than the other team today. And thankfully we did that."
It was arguably Arsenal's best overall performance since their 3-0 win over Manchester United at the Emirates last September, as they avoided repeating the same mistakes they made in their recent losses to Chelsea.
Laurent Koscielny and Shkodran Mustafi contained striker Diego Costa comfortably, in contrast to last season when the Spaniard managed to get an Arsenal player sent off in both league fixtures between the teams.
"It was important for everyone to be very disciplined, and we were today. And our two centre-backs were fantastic today with Costa, very good," Walcott said.
The speedy winger now has three league goals this season and agreed that Arsenal's first half was their best since last season's win over United.
"But I think it's actually been quietly coming to be honest. We're quietly doing our business. Everyone is just working for each other now," said Walcott, but cautioned that the team shouldn't get carried away.
"We've been here before. I've had some experience over the years. But we're not doing ourselves any harm. We just want to keep on doing our business. That's all we want to do, we want to try and improve and see what the negatives were in the game.
"I'm sure there will be a few. But we always want to keep a clean sheet. We keep clean sheets we're going to win games, because we can always score goals up front. So you've got to give credit to everyone today."