A 0-0 draw at home to Sporting CP on Wednesday saw Arsenal win their quarterfinal tie 1-0 on aggregate. They reach the final four for the second time in two seasons.
“It’s a great night, I’m so proud of everybody at the club,” he reflected. “Thank you to our supporters for the manner in which they followed the team. It’s the first time we’ve (reached the semi-finals consecutively) in 140 years, so that tells you the difficulty and magnitude of what we’ve done.
“I think we don’t realise it now, but we’ll realise it in a few years, so don’t take for granted what we’ve done. It’s extremely difficult to achieve, and it’s never been achieved (by ourselves), so big gratitude to our players and everyone who’s contributed to achieving that.
“We’re not perfect, we want to improve in every area, but we have two magical nights to play against Atletico and we’re certainly going to prepare well for that.
“We’ll take things from (October's meeting) and games they have played recently, but we’re going to have to go to Madrid, be ourselves, and compete in the manner we have - and then we’ll have a big chance to win it.”
On the performance on the night, Arteta added: “It’s the Champions League - the margins are very small, and when we had the dominance and situations to kill the tie, we didn’t. It was always going to be open but it was very controlled - especially in the second half - we didn’t allow any shots for the opposition apart from the last long throw, so it was very solid.
“We need to improve in certain areas, that’s for sure, and we need some players back in order to do that as well, but overall it was a great night.”