Football
Kevin Palmer 9y

Arsene Wenger: Thierry Henry 'wrong' on Olivier Giroud, Arsenal transfers

Thierry Henry is "wrong" to claim Arsenal need to buy four new players and cannot win the title with striker Olivier Giroud, manager Arsene Wenger said.

Wenger has hinted he will not look to make major changes to his squad in this summer's transfer window, as he believes he has already assembled a set of players ready to challenge for the game's top honours.

The Frenchman's side have been showing sparkling form in 2015 and are vying with Manchester City to finish second in this season's Premier League. Yet Gunners fans may have been hoping that the promise of recent weeks will be backed up by a couple of big-name signings ahead of next season after they fell a long way short of a sustained title challenge this time around.

However, Wenger is playing down those expectations, after suggesting the form his team have shown in recent weeks bodes well for their ambitions of challenging newly crowned Premier League champions Chelsea for top spot a year from now.

"We are not in need of absolute change," Wenger said. "We have a strong squad. We have some strong young players behind.

"I believe that some players who were questioned, like Mesut Ozil, have made big improvements in the second part of the season and becomes slowly the leader you want him to be in guiding our game.

"We have a big squad now. Lukas Podolski, Joel Campbell, Yaya Sanogo will come back from their loans. If you add that to the number of players we have, you can see we have a big squad now.

"We feel we have made up some ground, that will be the challenge of next season from the start, let's show we are there and capable to fight for it."

Wenger also hit out at the comments of his former player Henry, who suggested his lead striker Olivier Giroud may not have the qualities required to guide the Gunners to Premier League title success.

"I can accept that is an opinion, but the comment on Giroud was wrong," Wenger said. "I heard the same thing being said about [Nicolas] Anelka, about Thierry Henry himself and about Robin van Persie, and they all became world class players themselves.

"What I know is Giroud works very hard for the team and has a fantastic mentality and if the team does well it is down to him and, if on top of that he scores 20 or more goals, he has done his job."

Wenger went on to suggest Henry made his comments because he feels under pressure to make headline grabbing comments in his role as a Sky Sports TV pundit.

"We know all the system now of the modern media, especially on TV," he added. "They push you to be controversial because they give you a lot of money."

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