Middlesbrough must still regret missing out on 90-goal Premier League star - Arsenal were the true winners | OneFootball

Before Olivier Giroud was becoming an Arsenal cult hero in the Premier League, he was playing second tier French football, and Boro wanted him.

2009 is probably not a time in history that too many Middlesbrough supporters would wish to go back to, but if it meant Olivier Giroud was donning their club's shirt, perhaps that might've been different.

Indeed, Boro had just been relegated from the Premier League at the conclusion of the 2008/09 season, having enjoyed some of the club's greatest times just years prior.

A League Cup win, subsequent European adventures including going all the way to the final in 2006, and numerous top players plying their trade on Teesside - those early-mid 2000s days felt an awful long time ago, even in 2009.

However, as with any newly relegated top-flight side, the expectation was that should Middlesbrough get their recruitment right, then it may not be long before they were back amongst the big boys.

Olivier Giroud emerges on Middlesbrough's transfer radar in 2009

The name Olivier Giroud didn't mean much to many people in world football come 2009, but it did to Middlesbrough.

The French striker was then playing second tier football in France with Tours, having begun his senior career with Grenoble in the 2005/06 season.

However, to those who did catch a glimpse of him, the young Frenchman clearly possessed one key trait that all centre-forwards are judged by: the ability to score goals.

Indeed, he would bag 23 goals in 40 total appearances for Tours during the 2009/10 season (per FotMob), and, as per a Sky Sports report at the time, he was keen to take his talents across the English Channel.

"It is true some Ligue 1 and foreign clubs are following me," he told Le Quotidien du Foot via Sky Sports in December 2009.

"When a spy or a scout comes to meet me I give him my agent's contact. My priority remains Ligue 1, but in case of foreign propositions, I have always dreamt to play in England and the Premier League.

"There is Germany and Scotland too. If there is a good opportunity from abroad, I will have to think about it." Middlesbrough were known to be keen admirers of Giroud, but no such move materialised.

Giroud slips through Middlesbrough's net, before Arsenal catch themselves a cult hero

Giroud would remain in France for another two seasons, having left Tours in the summer of 2010 to sign for Ligue 1 outfit Montpellier.

It was there that Giroud would really transmit his name across European football, scoring 14 and 25 goals in all competitions across his two campaigns with Montpellier, which included being part of the club's first and only Ligue 1 title-winning season in 2011/12.

As such, by the summer of 2012, it wasn't Championship clubs such as Middlesbrough that were coveting his signature, it was Premier League ones, and not just any top flight clubs either.

Indeed, it would be Arsenal who would secure his services in July 2012, splashing out a reported £12m to bring the Frenchman to North London.

Giroud would later admit in the build up to Arsenal's FA Cup clash with Middlesbrough in 2015, and during the prime of his Arsenal career, that he very easily could have ended up as a Boro player back in 2009.

Speaking via The Express in February 2015, the Frenchman said: "Yes, that’s true (on the rumours of Boro's prior interest).

"Middlesbrough and Celtic (also wanted to sign me). It was a great team…today they are close to coming back into the English Premier League.

"It will be nice to play against them and it will remind me of my previous years in Tours." Perhaps in a cruel piece of footballing irony, Giroud scored the two goals that ensured the Gunners would knock Boro out of the FA Cup that year in a 2-0 win at the Emirates Stadium.

Giroud would go on to enjoy a brilliant career with Arsenal, scoring over 100 goals in 250+ appearances for the Gunners, whilst also picking up three FA Cup and Community Shield wins during his five-and-a-half-year affiliation with the club.

He would then go on to enjoy further success with both Chelsea and AC Milan, winning the Champions League, Europa League and FA Cup once again during his stay at Stamford Bridge, before winning Serie A with Milan in 2021/22.

Giroud would also make over 130 appearances for France on the international stage, and was part of the squad that lifted the 2018 World Cup in Russia.