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Wenger to hand attacker first start of the season against Reading

By mac14 on October 24, 2016

Image credit: Daily Star

According to the Mirror, Arsene Wenger is ready to hand Olivier Giroud his first start of the season during Arsenal’s EFL Cup clash against Reading tomorrow night.

Giroud has endured a frustrating campaign so far as his season was disrupted due to his late arrival to pre-season training following his participation in the final of Euro 2016.

The striker played just 51 minutes of Premier League football before suffering a toe injury during his late cameo appearance in our 1-1 Champions League draw at Paris Saint-Germain in September.

Giroud struggled to overcome the injury and has missed over six weeks of action but he has been working on his fitness at London Colney recently with the boss admitting at the weekend that the Frenchman could feature against Reading on Tuesday.

Wenger is quoted as saying by the Mirror:

“I don’t know. We’ll see. Physically he [Giroud] has no problem, he’s still not completely there but he’s better and might be in the squad on Tuesday.”

The Mirror claim that Giroud is now in line to make his first start of the season during our League Cup clash at the Emirates as he bids to try and regain his match sharpness.

Wenger is certain to make plenty of changes to his starting eleven tomorrow as some of the players looked knackered against Middlesbrough so I fully expect Giroud to make an appearance.

We’ll have to wait and see whether he does start, as the Mirror suggest, but it will be great to see Olivier back in action as we could have done with him against Boro at the weekend.

He’s now lost his place to Alexis Sanchez as we look far more dangerous with the Chilean international up front but Giroud is an excellent Plan B to have off the bench so let’s hope he makes a successful return tomorrow.