I was wrong
I admit, cos before the season started i was pretty optimistic about this team. I felt we could do with some new signings but I was also of the opinion that maybe, maybe if we didn’t even sign anyone beyond Cech we could still challenge for the title and maybe even win.
But I was wrong
This became evident as I watched us struggle to break down Liverpool. They weren’t impenetrable or anything, we got ourselves some decent chances, we just couldn’t finish. We did get a goal which was wrongly ruled as an offside, but we should have gotten a goal…to be fair so should they but while the reason they couldn’t was the bar, some superb goalkeeping and some desperate defending ours was poor finishing and a refereeing decision.
I watched the game and noticed some world class goalkeeping from Cech, he basically won us a point in that game and we can now understand why we paid 11 million for a 34 year old player. I saw some naïve defending from Calum Chambers who had a really difficult night as he was unable to do anything right, at least in the first half but then Coquelin came to the rescue a bunch of times and it wasn’t just his tackling that was impressive, his passing was also pretty good, according to Squawka Francis Coquelin had 91% pass completion and completed 83% of his tackles. He made 5 interceptions and 1 clearance and he didn’t even have one single foul! That was an amazing performance.
I saw a midfield trio of Ramsey, Ozil and Alexis play their socks off, Ozil and Alexis created 3 chances each and Ramsey had a goal wrongly disallowed for offside. Many say he’s no good on the right and maybe there’s merit to that argument but I think he had a good game. There was only one problem.
Giroud
Now this is not to slate the man. Watching that game I noticed something truly terrifying; Giroud was actually trying his best, he was giving his all. No joke, Giroud while sometimes anonymous in the first half one could say they didn’t create enough for him, but in the second half, Giroud tried to get in the right positions, tried to score, did everything he could and that’s when it dawned on me.
His best just wasn’t enough
It’s not that he’s not good, he’s just limited, there wasn’t more he could do in the situation. There was a chance where I felt he was pushed and he managed to get a shot away which Mignonlet promptly saved. It was a good save, but I came away from that game thinking; what if we had another strike, an upgrade? Would the result have been different? Who knows, but I really do think so.
So 7 days left in the transfer window and we find ourselves in a sticky situation, I staunchly believe at this point that we need a new striker, one with an oomph factor, which brings us to the other problem; which ones are out there that are available? In my opinion, none. That’s a huge problem. Jackson Martinez is the only one that might, MIGHT, have fit the bill, but we can never be sure. Benzema was never going to happen so I never got myself agitated over it. We could gamble and bring in another striker and hope he scores loads of goals , but that’s what we did with Welbeck and we have 8 goals in his first season, he could well come back and bang in a ton of goals, I don’t think it would be prudent to bring another ‘gamble’ in. So we find ourselves in quite the quagmire.
So what I think is this; internal solutions. I think we might want to revisit the Alexis experiment. When we bought him, most of us thought he was going to play centrally, I feel Arsene felt the same, but then it didn’t happen, or it didn’t happen for long. We might want to try it. If a good player can be found, then we must do the deal, but we have to start thinking about if we don’t and then we’ll have to get creative.
Many have said we need a DM and maybe we do, but the Coq has been good and against Liverpool he showed what he could do and I was impressed. Again I’ll say if a deal can be done, then it should. If we don’t fix things soon then we’ll be unable to save our season and sad as that sounds, we are definitely in save our season mode right now.
I sound quite bleak this morning *sigh*
So…you know… COYG?
