Bacary Sagna believes his future may lie in central defence.

One of Sagna's best performances in an Arsenal shirt came against Saturday's opponents Sunderland in a hard-fought 1-0 win at the Stadium of Light in February, when he filled in for the injured Laurent Koscielny.

The French defender has been a reliable back-up option in that role for Arsene Wenger and has drawn comparisons with former France international Lilian Thuram, who made an identical move from the right to the middle.

"I'm getting old and at right back you need to put in a lot more effort. I don't know how long I can do that to my maximum"

"[We make it work] because of our character, I think that we are fighters," Sagna told Arsenal Player. "Technically we are not better than anyone else but mentally we are strong and we know what we want and we always want to learn. Even at 30 I still have time to learn another position and I'm looking forward to it.

"Why not [play there in future]? I'm getting old and at right back you need to put in a lot more effort. I don't know how long I can do that to my maximum so maybe one day I will be able to play centre back.

"It [Sunderland] was a hard game last season, I think Laurent got injured so I had to play centre back because we didn't have any on the bench, so I just stuck to it and I just tried to communicate as much as I can with Per [Mertesacker] because he gave me a lot of advice.

"I also tried to communicate a lot with Carl [Jenkinson] because he was playing in the right-back position.

"We had a player sent off as well after one hour and it was really hard because they kept pushing but we showed great character and managed to win away."

Sagna believes his excellent early season form is down to his summer preparation.

"I had a pre-season and last year I didn't have one," he said. "It was quite difficult because I was still struggling with my ankle and you know when you don't play for one year your body doesn't feel the same.

"I had to work a lot and I manage to play with my team-mates in pre-season and that made a difference."