'We have the quality to go through the Champions League group stage' - Olivier Giroud

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger talks to Olivier Giroud before a training session

On the team

The quality of the squad is suitable to practice good and fluid football. When you play at Arsenal you automatically have chances [to score]. If you are efficient and not too clumsy, it can turn out well. But I also like playing for the others. I think I showed that again against Sunderland. It’s very positive, the quality in the team is sufficient.

On Arsenal’s squad depth

I’m a bit scared, we already have a couple of players aside. Squad problems occurred to us but despite that we will try and compete with the top teams this year.

On the Champions League and Marseille

We have to take a good a start, we’re going to Marseille to do our best and have a big game. It is going to be a great atmosphere. We became footballers to play that sort of games. I look forward to playing against those teams. It is going to be a very tough group but we have enough quality to go through.

We owe full respect to Marseille, they have had a good start to the season, we definitely can’t underestimate them. They are many international players among the squad. I’ll make sure my teammates behave in a good way because the atmosphere is going to be excellent and the players will want to show their best in front of their fans. There is a lot of quality in the squad, I know them well and I will try to advise my mates.

On which Marseille player he feared the most

I scored a couple of goals past Mandanda, I hope that will continue but the strong link is Mathieu (Valbuena) because he is the playmaker, he is very quick and technical. He provides good opportunities to Dimitri (Payet) or Gignac. I hope Gignac will have a bad day and won’t be as efficient as he usually is (laughing).

On Arsenal in the Champions League in the past years and if they can win a title this year

Of course, we’d like to win the title, but there are many top teams with huge means in the Premier League. Last year (in the Champions League) we didn’t have a bad round, we beat the future winners on the road and weren’t far from qualifying. I think we had a bad start and then after that we tried to compensate all year.

We were attacked by media and I do want to believe it wasn’t always justifiable and that is why we wanted to start in the best direction possible – avoiding losing distance and keeping our chances as high as possible. I think we have the quality to go through the group stage but thinking of winning the Champions League is a bit too presumptuous because they are many excellent teams out there.

On Arsène Wenger

I can see Wenger continuing with Arsenal especially if we finish in the top 3-4 this year and do good things in the Champions League, why not? He’s building a very coherent team and we managed to keep our best players this summer and bought one tremendous one. At the moment, we have a lot of injured players but I think the team can do some great things overall.