After victory against Newcastle United, Arsenal striker Robin van Persie has praised the strength of his team.

"We didn't start that well," Van Persie told Setanta Sports. "Newcastle were sharper, better, they wanted it more.

"It was tough. Especially when we scored we thought we could take it easy a little bit but that wasn't the case because Martins scored within a minute so after that we knew we had to crack on and at least score one more goal."

The win completes a good week for Arsenal who came back from a goal down against Hull in midweek to progress to the FA Cup semi-finals and Van Persie believes they can use those results as a springboard.

He added: "It tells us that we can bounce back. We showed it against Hull last week, we showed it again today.

"I think this team has a lot of character and it's up to us to show it until the end of the season because we can win lots of things this year."