Arsene Wenger was asked about Mathieu Debuchy, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Olivier Giroud and more in his press conference ahead of the Crystal Palace game.

Read on for what he had to say about this and the latest transfer rumours ahead of the opening of the January transfer window:

on how big a role Olivier Giroud can play this season…For me, it’s always a big role because even when he didn’t start the games he had a big impact coming on. Overall, we are a squad where everybody has its moments and it’s down to me to use well the players.

on Mathieu Debuchy’s interview claiming that they hardly speak…Yes, of course [we are listening to offers for Mathieu in January] but we speak. We have communication with all the players. It’s a little bit a frustrated article from a player who is injured, you know when you are injured you cannot play. When he had the opportunities to play when Bellerin was injured, he got injured. So I cannot do anything about that and I gave him last year the opportunity to go to Bordeaux on loan, but we had nobody coming in for him over the summer period and there are some things that are not true in this article. We never blocked him going to Fiorentina, nor Espanyol. They had no interest in him at all because we checked that, so you have to take this article with a little distance.

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on claims Debuchy was blocked from going to Manchester United…They have never made an offer for him. It’s completely untrue. It’s sometimes surprising to hear things like that.

on Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain being linked with Liverpool…No. We have all to face a lot of wrong information, you like me, we have to live with that. But we cannot influence that.

on Franck Kessie’s agent saying Arsenal want to sign him…No [it is not true].

on whether anyone has had a word with Gunnersaurus after the Watford mascot’s behaviour…No, not really, no. Let them express their talent! It’s important that the Premier League is creative with the mascots.

on what he thinks the ideal penalty is…The ideal penalty doesn’t exist. It’s just when the ball touches the net.

on what he encourages his penalty takers to do…What I encourage is to be as simple as possible. We have seen in some to be neutral, if you look at the European Championship, there were some games where basically only the defenders scored and all the strikers failed because they want to be a bit too complicated. Not flashy necessarily, but to stop your run, look at the keeper and go the other side of the keeper. But if the keeper doesn’t move, you have an uncertainty coming up and indecision… there is nothing worse than that. It’s a difficult exercise. Since I am in football, from Pele to Messi, everybody missed. That means it’s not as easy as it looks and when you get close to the penalty spot the goalkeeper becomes very big and the goal very small.

More polls coming soon!