Olivier Giroud says he’s not ‘worried’ about the summer arrival of Timo Werner as he’s confident he still has something unique and valuable to offer Frank Lampard with his hold-up play as Chelsea’s ‘fulcrum’.
The 33-year-old has been in outstanding form since the season restarted, scoring seven goals in all competitions, but he could be forgiven for having concerns about Chelsea’s recruitment, considering both Werner and Hakim Ziyech will be looking to slot into Lampard’s attack.
After all, Giroud recently admitted he ‘did everything’ he could to force a move away from west London in the January transfer window after finding himself on the periphery of Lampard’s first-team plans.
But Giroud has returned with renewed vigour and is ready to fight for his place ahead of the 2020/21 campaign.
‘Werner’s arrival is an additional motivation and it was inevitable that the club recruit a striker,’ the Frenchman told L’Equipe in the lead-up to Chelsea’s FA Cup final clash with Arsenal.
‘Chelsea are a great club, which spends money to strengthen the team, and I was expecting someone to come.
‘With Ziyech and Werner, Chelsea will try to be more competitive.
‘If you had told me that it was a player of my profile who was coming, I would have been worried. It is not.
‘As other teams play in a compact way against us, it’s not bad to have a big, a fulcrum that can make the link.
‘But I’m not naive: Werner didn’t arrive to sit on the bench.
‘I’ll do everything so that Lampard finds himself in a complex situation when it comes to making his selection.’
In his first interview at Stamford Bridge, Werner challenged himself to score more goals for Chelsea than he managed at Leipzig and claimed his pace made him the ‘perfect’ player for English football.
‘The style of the Premier League is very fast and my speciality is that I am really fast so I think it is perfect for me to play here,’ the German told Chelsea TV earlier this week.
‘It is another league in another country so I can improve myself to bring it to another level, so those are the reasons I come to the Premier League and to Chelsea.
‘I’m very happy to be here and I’ll try to score as many goals as I can for Chelsea, that is the big reason why they bought me, to bring the goals I scored in Leipzig here, and maybe score more goals than there.’
On the role Lampard played in his decision to join the Blues, Werner added: ‘He was the main point.
‘We talked a lot about things like system, like how he wants to play and sees me playing, and how the system fits to me.
‘He is a really nice guy who not only told me what he wants from me as a player because he wants to help me as a guy.
‘He knows me now a little bit better and it fits very good between us and now I am happy to be here.’
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