Following our win over Crystal Palace on Sunday, Olivier Giroud spoke about his relief over grabbing our first three points of the reason after facing criticism for our loss against West Ham.

After a shocking performance against West Ham in our first match of the season, it was vital that our squad bounced back and returned to winning ways. Losing our second game would have been disastrous and, after the positive build-up of pre-season, I’m not sure we could have recovered from such a blow.

Giroud revealed that although he was glad we’ve got the three points, the match was exciting.

 

He went on to tackle the criticism the team faced after our defeat to the Hammers.

“You always get criticised when you lose, especially at home, but we know we are the same [team],” he said. “At the beginning of the championship we want more and we want to win the league basically so we are going to join the title race. When you say that you have to face the expectations.

“It was bad luck that performance [against West Ham] but even if we lost last week the most important thing in football is to bounce back the week after and keep your faith and your game. That is what we tried to do and we succeeded today.”

Although the team did face criticism after our last performance, I would say it’s justified. We weren’t good enough and those three points could prove to be crucial in the title race.

At least we can now go into our next fixture against Liverpool on a positive with our confidence high.