Giroud - Playing with Alexis is easy

Olivier Giroud believes that playing alongside Alexis Sanchez will be “easy” for him and his Arsenal team-mates.

The Chile international started Sunday’s Emirates Cup defeat to AS Monaco, and impressed with a lively performance.

Giroud is delighted to have the 25-year-old in the Gunners squad, and feels they will strike up a good partnership once everyone is fully fit.

“He is a fantastic player and I think we will have a good understanding together on the pitch,” the French striker said.

“He is simple to play with and he can feel the game - I think it will be easy to play with him and it is a great signing for us. He is really quick, he hits the ball really well and he is quite clever so he will be interesting for us I think.

“We did well [against Benfica] and had a great game and scored a lot of goals. Here there was another team with a lot of players who have only had three or four days of training, and you could see it. Especially me, it was really hard physically for me and I didn’t really feel well in the game.

“I didn’t go to New York, like a lot of players, so we are in a different stage of form so it is really hard to judge our potential for the moment. But I am sure that when we are fit we will do fantastic things.

“We just have to work hard in training and we will have a good test on Sunday. We will be ready because we want to win this first trophy [of the season].”