With his two well taken goals at the weekend, the Arsenal and France international forward Olivier Giroud fired the Gunners into the quarter-finals of the FA cup, a competition he seems to like having scored three goals in five games in our road to Wembley last season.
Arsene Wenger was full of praise for the big striker after his latest brace and strongly hinted that Giroud was definitely the main man for us in the centre forward role. That will certainly have helped the 28-year old, as he thrives on confidence, but his performances and stats will already have given Giroud plenty of the self-belief that he told Arsenal Player is coursing through him right now.
And who can blame him for feeling good about himself? Giroud has not had the praise and media attention of our new strike star Alexis Sanchez but he does a great job for Arsenal. And if you look at his contribution, his 10 goals from just 18 games (with five of them as a sub) is actually a better ratio than the 18 scored by the Chilean in 34 games (two as a sub).
Giroud said, “I’ve scored seven goals in my last 10 appearances, so it’s a good stat for me. I feel good and my confidence is high. I want to help the team to win more games and to achieve our targets.
“We have plenty of solutions up front. We are all different, so it’s nice.
“We can find each other really well on the pitch and what’s most important is to keep this movement and this variation in the game.
“It’s a pleasure to play with the boys and I think we are really strong offensively. [We need to] do a great job together defensively as a unit, like we showed at Manchester City, it’s a good idea to do it again and again, especially against big teams.
“We need to be focused on our defensive game, because we know that up front we are always going to create chances to score.”
It is looking good for Arsenal all over the pitch at the minute. So if Giroud and Alexis can keep up their form and with all the creative options in the squad, the Gunners should not have many problems finding the back of the net. And with Coquelin in front of our solid back five, will we have enough for a top four finish and a nice shiny trophy to celebrate again?