It was another highly successful night for The Gunners in Europe, as they ran out 1-0 winners in Auxerre, to leave them one point away from the next round. Although it was another good team performance, Arsene Wenger was keen to praise the match winner Gilberto Silva.

The Frenchman says that the World Cup winner has exceeded all expectations since his arrival in North London. The Brazilian scored the fastest-ever Champions League goal last week away to PSV Eindhoven and tonight hit the match-winning effort at Auxerre after 47 minutes.

There was still the worrying sight for Arsenal of striker Thierry Henry going off with a hamstring problem.

However, on a night, when the Gunners moved within one point of securing their place in the next group stage, Henry declared his optimism that he could still be fit for Sunday's game against Sunderland. He revealed: "I felt my hamstring and decided not to take any risks. I'm hoping to be all right for Sunday."

 Wenger believes his French international could be 50-50 for the game at Highbury although he described it as a "very minor" injury.

The Arsenal boss praised Gilberto for the way in which he dominated the game alongside Patrick Vieira in central midfield and scored the winner to take his tally for the season to three goals.

"Frankly, I didn't expect him to score so many goals but when you buy players you sometimes get pleasant surprises," revealed Wenger of his £4.5million summer signing.

"But that is one of those surprises, while another is that I didn't expect him to be so good in the air. "Having seen him play for Brazil, I did not know how often he would get into the box as he has more of a defensive role with his national team."

The Highbury boss, left Fredrik Ljungberg out due to an overnight migraine, was rather less impressed with a second half tackle that left Ashley Cole nursing a painful knock.

"I'm not happy at all that he was caught after he had crossed the ball," added Wenger. He was outstanding tonight though and is in great form so we don't want to lose him for any games."

Wenger praised his team's entire defensive display as they showed their developing maturity and patience. He said: "It was more of a tactical game, a little bit like chess but I must give a lot of credit to my team as they know how to win even when it is a little bit less fluent.

"They have that mental strength to know that sometimes you need to be patient.

"Both the defence and the defensive midfielders were outstanding even if we were a little bit less fresh physically. I thought Pascal Cygan played very well. He was composed, intelligent and had an outstanding game."