Can we win the league with a striker like Olivier Giroud.
Some will say yes
Many will say no
For me, I think i’ll take my answer from this season’s end. If we win the league, then hell yeah, we can win the league with Olivier Giroud and if we don’t, well…you know…
It occurs to me that on Tuesday night all the teams above us had their strikers score for them. It was the Jamie Vardy show as he scored two great strikes to sink Liverpool, the first especially catching the eye. Aguero did the business for Man city and that was the difference between the two teams. Even the damn Spuds had Harry Kane score for them and us? Well Giroud hardly had a chance and when Walcott was presented with his he fluffed it.
It was frustrating.
Walcott hasn’t scored since December when he scored that great goal against Manchester City and Giroud has not scored since Liverpool, coincidentally, neither have Arsenal. So from there we can see just how much we rely on our striker to score and at the moment he just isn’t.
Alexis is back to ease the goalscoring burden, but Alexis can’t do it all alone. The rest of the team should chip in with goals yes, but the primary job of a striker is to get those goals. Now it is not to say that Giroud is a bad striker and I think a lot of the stick he comes in for is unmerited, he can’t become something he’s not, the overreliance on him methinks is the problem.
His only backup is Walcott, a player than came on against Southampton around the 60th minute mark to score goals and the only time I remember seeing Walcott at all was when he missed (it was a miss in my opinion, he should have buried that), beyond I think he touched the ball a mere two times. That’s not good enough.
We all know he’s a player that relies on speed on making intelligent runs and all that, but when he doesn’t even do that right then you have to worry. You’re not good at build up play? Then it’s only expected that you work on stuff like finishing, first touch and timing runs, so at least if those are honed perfectly then we’ll know that you’re doing something right.
This Arsenal team is creating chances, we’re not burying them and that to me is a worry. We can’t buy anyone now, so all we can hope for is that the players we do have can somehow find it in them to make it work.
We know Giroud is a player who can score on Sunday and then go on an eight game streak or something. I really hope he does that now, that’ll be fun no?
We play Bournemouth and it’s a chance for us to get back to winning ways. If we can win that then maybe there’s hope for us against Leicester. This weekend is a chance to make up some lost ground, Leicester play City and I hope they draw. Tottenham face a difficult Watford and while that’s hardly daunting one can hope. I really hope everyone is fit, if they are then we’ve got a shot at this, but please get rid of that Ramsey/Flamini partnership.
Till later.
