Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud refused to lose confidence whilst being forced to sit on the bench to accommodate Alexis Sanchez in his favoured role.
The Chilean forward filled in at centre-forward at the beginning of the season while the Frenchman was yet to return from international duty, and excelled in the role.
Giroud then had to sit out a huge chunk of the campaign whilst Alexis continued his extremely impressive goalscoring run, which appeared to bring the best out of a number of his team-mates.
The 30 year-old revealed that he remained confident despite being overlooked, for the first half of the term.
“I never had doubts about my quality,” Giroud said.
“When you show what you can do on the pitch it’s better for a striker. I want to carry on like that and keep efficiency high.
“I always try to bring something to the team and I’m very pleased to score important goals.
“But we need to be more stronger at the beginning of games because I’m not going to score goals in the last minute every week!” he added.
Giroud strongly impressed in his time as our super-sub, and was showing exactly why Arsene Wenger has had so much belief in him this season. Arsenal fans have always been quick to turn on Olivier when things have not gone well for the striker, but they have had no reason to get on his back at all this term.
The only negative thing that has been said about Giroud this term was his celebration when levelling the scores after being 3-0 down to Bournemouth in the Premier League, when the team should have been chasing that fourth and winning goal, but the sheer emotion of earning at least the point from such a deficit would have been hard to contain.
Has Giroud enjoyed his most consistent season? Has the competition brought the best out in him?
Pat J
#IBelieveInOlivierGiroud
With so many fouls called now, to have a set piece specialist is such a weapon to have. He along with Sanchez should always be on the pitch unless we are playing strictly counter attacking football such as protecting a goal advantage in a home and away CL game.
I prefer Alexis up front and Giroud as a Super Sub
When Theo returns I’d like to see
Theo….. Ozil…. Lucas
…………. Alexis
Giroud SuperSub
But in meantime I’m OK with
Iwobi /Ox….. Ozil…… Alexis
………………..Giroud
if we want to beat Chelsea and we must beat to have any realistic chance of actually winning the title- we must start Alexis upfront against them and return Giroud to the bench.
We had better be on out toes on Saturday against the saints. They won’t just roll over for us to make the next round, they will be bouyed by tonight’s good result they got. And will make a real fight of it. We will need our top players on form and firing if we want to overcome. As they seem to be a little bit of a bogey team for us in recent times. But let’s put that to bed with a good game and a win to the next round coygs