A win, another clean sheet and two goals, there was plenty for Mikel Arteta to be pleased about in our 2-0 victory over Brighton in the Carabao Cup.
Ethan Nwaneri opened the scoring before Bukayo Saka helped seal our passage into the last eight of the competition.
The game saw Max Dowman and Andre Harriman-Annous make their first starts for us and reflecting on the victory, Mikel was delighted with the win in N5.
"A beautiful evening for many reasons," our manager said. "We are in the quarterfinals of the competition. We changed a lot of players today. We played players I never played before together against a very strong Premier League team.
"We had two debuts as a starter with Max and with Andre as well - I think everybody feels very, very proud of what they've done, the way they have responded to this huge challenge at their age and the fact that we won the game."
Mikel made 10 changes for the contest, including a new centre-back pairing of Piero Hincapie, making his first start, and Cristhian Mosquera. The duo helped us to a sixth straight clean sheet and our manager was thrilled to see us keep our latest shutout.
He said: "They'd never played together, so to build that chemistry, it takes time. I think they've done really, really well today. Again, for Piero especially, he hasn't played that many minutes to have his first start with the club.
"Again, a lot of positives to take, some very big learnings as well that we have to be very cautious of. But overall, a great night."
It was our eighth win in a row in all competitions and with the latest coming in front of our supporters, Mikel praised the crowd at Emirates Stadium.
He said: "I think it was a full house again. They really supported the team; you could sense the energy. I'm really pleased to see that kind of turnaround, and very grateful."