Theo Walcott has claimed that it is the players' responsibility to ease pressure of the shoulders of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

The Frenchman has been under the spotlight all season, but that intensified on Tuesday night when his team were knocked out of the Champions League at the last-16 stage in a damaging 10-2 aggregate defeat to Bayern Munich.

Prior to the match, a protest was staged by supporters calling for Wenger to walk away from the job that he has held for the past 20 years.

Walcott has admitted that he and his teammates are in the dark over the 67-year-old's future at the Emirates, but believes that the players need to step up.

In an interview with the London Evening Standard, Walcott said: "The players are like everybody else - we don't really know what's going on. We just want to try to focus on the football. The manager is focused on us. You can see how passionate he is with us from the way he talks to us in the meetings.

"He will take this on himself but us players need to look at ourselves. The manager has been taking a lot of flak in recent weeks and us players have been accepting it, but we can't.

"We need to take the pressure off the manager and that will happen by performances. Who knows what the manager will do? Players just want to play football for this club and do well for the manager."

Arsenal face a tough challenge in qualifying for next season's Champions League as they currently reside fifth in the table, with just seven points separating second from sixth in the standings.