Arsenal: Olivier Giroud Situation Getting Even Stickier

Arsenal’s big Frenchman Olivier Giroud is not back from his phantom toe injury yet and recent updates add further doubt to the situation.

Arsenal had been so incredibly reliant on Olivier Giroud for about a four year period that imagining life without him was rather intimidating. There was no one there to back him up. Wenger continued to avoid finding a suitable competitor for the big man, so he kept on being the only option.

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My how things have changed. Now, we can’t seem to find a reason to bring Giroud back. He has been out since the beginning of the season, from just being out of favor to a toe injury now that has supposedly kept him out for numerous weeks, all the way through this international break.

I’m not doctor, but how is it that a toe injury that supposedly isn’t that serious has gone this long without being talked about as either more serious than first thought, or completely healed? I’ve heard of nagging hamstring problems, but a nagging toe problem? I’m not sold.

Olivier Giroud is not back in training yet, which is utterly shocking and makes me wonder if the conspiracy theory I started brewing not long ago may have some credence. I compared his situation to that of Tomas Rosicky’s two years back. The Czech had proven that he had plenty left in the tank and plenty left to give, but ‘injuries’ kept springing up.

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He had to come out an announce that his situation was ‘not funny’ in order for any attention to get brought to it.

Given that we are now a week into international break and there is still no word from Giroud, we may be looking at a similar situation. It’s tough to ween someone out of the club, but it’s easy to keep him sidelined because his health hasn’t cleared up. Could Wenger be taking the easy route in an attempt to avoid making a hard decision?

Again, it doesn’t sound all that plausible, but it wouldn’t be completely impossible.

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Everyone is saying that Alexis is the way to go anyway and that’s well and good, but you still have to give to Giroud what is Giroud’s. He deserves to play and I sincerely hope that this is just a bit of unfortunate circumstance, because the idea of Wenger turning on his countryman and freezing him out of the club is very un-Wenger like.