Olivier Giroud is loving his life at the minute.

Returning from a broken leg in super-quick time, the forward has set about making up for the three months he missed by scoring as many as he can, as quickly as he can.

Picking up the Barclay’s Player of the Month award for March thanks to his five goals in four league games, Giroud has been speaking about how happy he was when Arsenal signed some players to compete for his position.

An unusual reaction, for sure, but perhaps part of the reason we are seeing Giroud develop even further as the season progresses.

“When I was injured, I was really happy to see Alexis and Danny sign, because I was telling myself that it would push me to give my best every day,” Giroud told Arsenal. “I used to say that football is never lasting so you have to question yourself every week, and that’s what I try to do.

“It’s a benefit for the team and for me to have a lot of good strikers.”

Top of the form table, Arsenal have seen themselves climb the league and move to within a point of second placed Manchester City. They know that a win on Saturday will all but secure their Champions League Round of 16 knockout for another season.

“We will want to keep the FA Cup,” he added. “We won it last year and in the Premier League we have a really tough game on Saturday. We need to beat Liverpool to keep them far from us in the Champions League race.

“We will want to finish strongly in third place or second place – it doesn’t matter but we want to qualify for the Champions League straight away. Let’s focus on our game first and we’ll see where that will get us. Hopefully City or Chelsea will miss some steps.”