Arsenal Player of the Month: October, with Culann Davies video

This month could well have made it three in a row for Aaron Ramsey, but Culann and I put it to a vote on Twitter between our two contenders, the other being Olivier Giroud, and the French striker came out on top. In truth, it could have been one of a large number of players: Wojciech Szczesny continued his fine form; Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny’s partnership blossomed even further; Bacary Sagna and Kieran Gibbs were superb either side of them; and of course Aaron Ramsey kept on impressing.

However, Giroud was the choice of most people, and it’s easy to see why. The Frenchman has improved so much in his second season with Arsenal, as has been the trend throughout his career. He’s scoring more, netting against Napoli, Borussia Dortmund and Crystal Palace – two of those were to change a 1-0 lead to a 2-0 lead, making our games more comfortable to see out, while the other was to equalise against Dortmund. He didn’t contribute a lot in big games last season, let alone score, so to see him bullying Subotic and Hummels at the Emirates and dragging us level was brilliant.

Like with Ramsey, though, it’s not just Giroud’s goals that are impressive. His all-round play has been magnificent, and Subotic and Hummels wasn’t the only centre-back partnership he gave a rough time. He may be up front on his own, but he can handle the challenge of leading the line alone no problem. He’s a very useful outlet when we can’t play out from the back – his hold-up play is now very accomplished, and the ball just sticks to him – and he can now create something from nothing. That’s happened a few times this season; give him the ball in a tight area and he uses his strengths (one of those being his physical strength) to manufacture space and an opening.

That’s something that has really impressed me about Giroud – he knows his strengths and uses them well. On top of that, he knows his limitations: he isn’t the best dribbler, so when he gets the ball he usually releases it as soon as he can, which benefits the team as we can play at a high tempo with quick close combinations. Giroud knows his strengths and weaknesses and uses that to the team’s advantages. His upturn of assists this year proves that – he’s a team player.

His goal against Napoli pretty much summed a lot of his game up. Alert and alive, he fired in a pass to Mesut Özil and spun away from the defenders to make his traditional near post run, before finishing with minimum fuss. Giroud loves quick give-and-gos and also making a run at the near post, and that goal saw him do both to effectively finish off Napoli.

What’s so encouraging, for me, is that Giroud doesn’t look out of place dovetailing with the likes of Özil and Cazorla – in fact, he’s on the exact same wavelength as them offensively, which says a lot about his intelligence. He’s constantly able to link up with our attacking players perfectly, and that’s a big compliment to how good he is at link-up play.

It was interesting to see Giroud play against a side with Luis Suarez the other night, the player who almost displaced him as Arsenal’s main striker. Giroud knew that he had to prove Arsenal didn’t miss out by not replacing him, and although he spurned his biggest goal-scoring chance, he still put in a great performance, troubling all three of Liverpool’s centre-backs. Let’s hope he doesn’t rest on his laurels and continues to go from strength to strength.