Arsenal: ‘Determined’ Olivier Giroud the perfect annoyer

Arsene Wenger has stated that Olivier Giroud is determined to fight for a starting role. The Frenchman is the perfect annoyer to Alexandre Lacazette and his competition will only push Arsenal’s record signing to greater heights.

Inner-squad competition is rarely a bad thing. The ability for a manager to threaten his starting players with the loss of their position is usually a very influential motivating tool that ensures players perform to the best of their ability. For many years, it has been lacking within the Arsenal dressing room.

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While the squad last year was deep and varied, there was not enough talent in key areas to challenge and to spur on the starting players. There was too big a gap in quality between the first XI and those in a supporting role, and nowhere was that truer than at centre-forward.

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Olivier Giroud and Danny Welbeck were the assumed starters for most of the year, once it was decided that Alexis Sanchez would be shifted out wide. Both were adequate in their own ways. But neither were pushing the other for the entrenched starting role; there was little competition between the two to improve their collective performance.

But with the club-record addition of Alexandre Lacazette, that may be about to change. Given that Lacazette had seemingly taken Giroud’s job from him, there were suggestions that Giroud would be sold, with Arsene Wenger no longer needing his services.

Giroud, though, is a tough and gritty player, who is willing to scrap for his opportunity. And Wenger himself has responded to reports of a possible exit, stating that Giroud is determined to challenge Lacazette for the starting berth:

Giroud is the perfect annoyer in this situation. His character is such that he is a tireless worker. He is undeterred in his pursuit of what he wants and he will not relent in trying to get it. In this case, that means playing to a standard that forces Wenger to drop Lacazette for him.

That may sound like an unlikely scenario. Simply put, that’s because it is. But the beneficiaries of this intrasquad battle will be Arsenal. Having players that can challenge and improve one another is what makes title-challenging squads. It is why Sir Alex Ferguson enjoyed such sustained and relentless success at Manchester United.

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Both Giroud and Lacazette will only spur one another on to a higher level of performance. That is most certainly a good thing and it is why keeping Giroud at the Emirates should be a priority this summer.