By Lloyd Webb
Laurent Koscielny believes Olivier Giroud’s fighting spirit helped him regain his best form.
The striker has scored five times in last three games, including a hat-trick against Olympiacos in the Champions League.
Koscielny has also been impressed with Mesut Ozil and says both Giroud and the Germany international have bags of confidence going into Monday’s Premier League clash with Manchester City.
“I think Olivier did not play a lot at the beginning of the season so he worked hard in training and he is a fighter,” said Koscielny. “To get back into the squad and score some important goals - it is important to have confidence.
“It's not just to score goals, he can do more on the pitch and he is important at every defensive free-kick or corner because he is very tall and his heading is very important for us.
“Mesut, like Olivier has confidence. He has given a lot of assists this season and we are happy with him because a lot of people last year talked about him because he didn’t have many goals at Arsenal and he needed to score more and give more assists.
"He is at a high level now and I hope for him and for us that he can score more goals."
Koscielny thinks Manchester City and Arsenal have been unlucky with injuries this campaign and knows how important the game on Monday is.
“They started this season with a lot of wins,” he said. “After, they had a lot of injuries like us. I think two or three will come back against us. When you lose an important player in your team you need time to give confidence to the others.
“They had a bad result in some games but they are still very important in the league. It is important to win against them. We need to get some good results. We are aware we have to play a lot of games and it is a difficult period.
"We know we will play a big team like Manchester City but we also will play Bournemouth who are trying to stay in the Premier League so it will be harder. We need to focus on our game and try to get the three points."
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