Theo Walcott believes Arsenal will be feared in the Champions League after their 5-2 demolition of Fenerbahce in Istanbul which ended the Turkish club's unbeaten home run of 16 European matches.

The England international, who scored his team's second goal, hopes that victory has laid down a marker for the rest of Europe. "All the teams will look and see the win, Arsenal away, with a young team and I think the other teams will be scared to play us," Walcott said. "That's the impression we want to give out to all the other teams. We do that and we have always got them on the back foot and hopefully we can just keep performing like that."

Arsenal, without the injured William Gallas, Kolo Toure and Barcary Sagna, are within one win of making the knock-out stages and Walcott says the victory has given the squad a massive confidence boost. "It was absolutely brilliant, he said. "The main thing was getting the three points and everyone got their jobs right and we scored five goals and it was nice to see us taking our chances.

"This young team has had a lot of experience at Champions League level now. We knew their fans would be right behind them but we quietened them down straight away by scoring two very early goals and it was a brilliant performance."

With a two-point cushion at the top of Group G and Fenerbahce to come next at the Emirates Stadium, Walcott believes it gives the team a chance to re-focus on their domestic campaign. "It definitely does help because the Premier League is important as well," he said. "We always want to play well whatever game we play, but we are just looking at every game as it comes, not getting ahead of ourselves and that's all we can do really."