Olivier Giroud: Wenger hails unsung striker’s half-ton after “fantastic” week

If City and Arsenal draw, for instance, Leicester will have a clear route to extending their lead at the top of the Premier League!

After Giroud struck from the spot, Welsh midfielder Aaron Ramsey netted in the 38th minute to give Arsenal a win that took them above Manchester City and Leicester City, who hosted Chelsea late last night. We’ve scored eight goals and I think it was a fantastic week.

“We spent a lot of energy away in the Champions League on Wednesday but found the resources to win again here today, in another away match”.

“But at the end I can live with it. This could prove to be a very special moment for us in the season to strike back against such a team”. “I knew that Villa were fighting to survive…it was a controlled performance and a great week for us”.

At 29, Giroud is only the seventh Arsenal player to reach 50 goals in the Premier League, joining Thierry Henry, Ian Wright, Robin van Persie, Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires and Theo Walcott in an illustrious club.

Following these, Wenger said of the striker that, “I believe he is at the top of his game”.

The German play maker is world class superstar whose eye of the final pass is just too good that his former Real Madrid teammates Cristiano Ronaldo had to question Real’s decision to sell the world cup victor by saying this, “Ozil knows me, he knows my movement. i don’t understand why they sold him, he a galactico”. He says when you get the ball be positive and attack players.

There are those matches but there are also others like the one here, and in that crucial victory against Olympiakos, when Giroud shows his worth to Arsenal as a classic centre-forward, one of the few left at the highest echelons of European football and who since arriving from Montpellier in 2012 has done that most of important of things for a goalscorer – score goals. “He is also mentally very strong”.

He added: “I’m happy to have a team who still create chances”.

PSG coach Laurent Blanc saw his side extend their unbeaten start to the domestic season with a 5-1 rout of Lyon yesterday, but he said there were two teams he was hoping to dodge in the draw. I see that as an opportunity, not a problem.

With Garde admitting that he’s spent more time working directly with the players than he normally would owing to a smaller coaching staff at this minute, Sinclair said there was a heavy focus on looking at our negatives in games and working on them from the new gaffer.

Remi Garde pocketed a Premier League winner’s medal as a player with Arsenal in 1998 and enjoyed a successful stint with Lyon in Ligue 1 but his Villa players are in a huge battle battle to emerge from the relegation zone.

That 16-match run, which included Arsenal’s 3-0 win past year, rarely looked in doubt once the Gunners grabbed an eighth minute lead.

Every manager has to win every game. For years it was the lack of a trophy, as they blithely and ignorantly ignored the fact that Arsene Wenger had no money but was still managing to beat big spending clubs around us to the Champions League places.