There is no doubt that Olivier Giroud, who was once amongst the top favourites of Arsene Wenger, has now fallen further down the pecking order, as Alexis Sanchez has been in superb form this season for the French manager and his team. However, Wenger now admits that his star striker finds it difficult to remain happy as he wants Giroud to remain at Arsenal despite being not the first choice striker in his team.
So impressive has been the Chilean’s form that despite going through a transition from winger to striker, he is managing to keep the Frenchman, Giroud away from the starting eleven. The 30 year old has not started a game this season for the Gunners and his manager has spoken out on his centre-forward.
“How do we keep them all happy? Honestly I do not know,” said Wenger. “If you have only one striker, the press says ‘why don’t you buy another striker?’ Once you buy one more they say ‘how can you keep him happy?’ We are in a world where you have to know where you want to be and in my case I want Giroud to stay, I want Giroud to extend his contract. After he has to live with the competition and for me he is a very important player at the club, on the pitch and off the pitch. I want him to stay, he has to decide if he can live with what is going on but personally I like Giroud very much.”
The highly talented France international has come off the bench on quite a few occasions now to score crucial goals for his side, including the one that rescued a point at Old Trafford this season.
Despite that, Wenger knows he would rather have Giroud fighting for a place in the starting eleven, than just accepting the fact that he is not good enough to represent the Gunners. After all, it was him who signed the Frenchman after being impressed by his performances in his native country, for his former clubs.
Wenger has had an experience of dealing with talented players and has juggled to keep them happy at times, though it is never an easy task for sure.
He further added, “We had Kanu, Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and a young Robin Van Persie. It is never easy. You cannot keep them all happy but our job is we produce every weekend unhappy people. There are dangers in our job, the real danger are players who are just happy to be there.”
