Arsene Wenger won't sell Olivier Giroud and Marseille have made no contact over striker

Arsene Wenger today insisted he wants Olivier Giroud to remain at Arsenal next season and claimed the club have had no contact with Marseille over a possible move to the Ligue 1 side.

Marseille have reportedly made Giroud their top summer transfer target and are willing to pay up to £20million for the 30-year-old, who has started just eight Premier League games this season.

Despite losing his place to Alexis Sanchez as a central striker earlier in the campaign and now facing increased competition from a fit-again Danny Welbeck, Giroud remains an important part of the Gunners’ future plans – even though Wenger is yet to confirm whether he will remain at the club once his own contract expires in the summer.

“I have had no approach from Marseille, and we want to keep Olivier Giroud at the club,” Wenger said.

Giroud would have found his place under even greater scrutiny had Arsenal been successful in their pursuit of Jamie Vardy last summer.

The Gunners had a £30m bid accepted before the start of Euro 2016 only for Vardy to turn them down and sign a new £100,000-a-week deal to stay at Leicester City.

As Standard Sport revealed last June, Vardy was uncertain whether he would be Arsenal’s first-choice striker but Wenger believes there was nothing more they could have done to lure him to Emirates Stadium.

“Honestly, no – I believe that we did what we wanted to do,” said the Gunners boss.

“He was one of the strikers that was available but when you come to a big club, you cannot guarantee [being our main striker] to anybody.

“Transfers, successful or not successful, are part of it. You accept you are in a job where you have to accept the decisions of the players and he made that decision, that I respect completely. After, you move forward and you look at something else.”

Arsenal face champions Leicester at home tomorrow seeking to reduce a seven-point deficit to fourth-placed Manchester City with seven games left to play.

And Wenger believes Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final win against City could be the platform for a late charge, especially after Liverpool lost at home to Crystal Palace and with two top-four rivals facing each other in Thursday’s Manchester derby.

“Big games give you confidence and convince you that you can win,” he said. “That’s the most important thing in our job.

“It will give us a lift for sure. But then we have to show we can keep that level of energy and that level of desire, of hunger in every single game until the end of the season.

“The door to the top four is open but what it demands from us is consistency in the results now until the end of the season. It’s still possible, but that means we’ll maybe have to have a perfect run-in.”

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain faces a late fitness test on a foot injury and Wenger must decide whether to persist with a 3-4-3 formation that has proved successful against City and Middlesbrough.

“What it did was get the focus on the players on something that is concrete to forget anxiety and a little bit of uncertainty,” said Wenger. “Sometimes when a team doesn’t do well, just focusing on something different helps to focus on something that might be better. We realised that we have to fight like mad to come back and win our games.

“We are in a formation that is really adaptable because Gabriel can play right back and so overall I think we play a system that is not a strict three at the back because when we have the ball Chamberlain plays midfielder basically.”

Wenger continued to sidestep questions about his future. When asked if there was any update, he replied: “No. Was it about the French elections that you wanted any news?”