Arsène Wenger

Can see issues with this downline

Surely made more sense to bring in a young striking prospect in combination with Giroud and invest £50M elsewhere.

I’ve defended Giroud a lot myself based on the fact that in my opinion, he has tried his best and has done a lot for us. I think people forget that he basically became RvP’s replacement, obviously not with his style of play but as our focal point in attack. He’s scored 100 goals in 5 years, not exactly a piss poor return.

I think most of the criticism of Giroud is that he should not be starting for a club like Arsenal, and I totally agree, but that isn’t his fault is it? It’s Wengers fault for waiting 5 years to even get a striker who could really challenge him for that slot in the side. I think he is a good option to have in the squad and hopefully he can contribute off the bench as he did last season, because it could be useful.

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I don’t disagree with the notion that we should be signing young forwards, this has been one of my big bug bears of recent years. I defend Giroud but I wouldn’t have had a problem with letting him go if I thought there was a chance of him being replaced by a good young player who looks like they have the potential to one day be top class.

But Wenger seems to be completely incapable of signing a good young striker these days, so within that context I’ve been glad that Giroud is still here.

I agree.
It’s not his fault if he has been our starting striker for five seasons, and he is more than adequate as a back up for a world class striker, when we get one.

But the striker is not the only problem with our goal scoring, it’s also our attacking midfielders.
Where are the goals going to come from after this season?
In recent seasons, Sanchez has been our highest scoring midfielder, and makes assists as well, and Ozil has the most assists.
We also have Cazorla who has also been responsible for a lot of our best attacking play, and amazingly Walcott’s stats show he is one of our best finishers.

So, with three of those four probably leaving at the end of this season, and Walcott not starting most matches, we are very short of goal scoring, or goal making, players.
Also, Giroud will be too old, Welbeck seems to be a injury prone and this leaves us with Lacazette who is ok.

What a mess.

Agreed mostly, but I think you may be underestimating Lacazette. He is a proven goalscorer and has 4 to his name already, and could have more if you factor in all of the posts and that disallowed one at Stoke, not to mention he hasn’t had enough minutes.

I see him as a talented player who can link up with the midfield well when he drops back and he clearly is a quality finisher. I think we don’t have the players who can find him, and he still basically hasn’t played with Alexis or Ozil. Notice how often he looks to get in behind and no one can offer a defense splitting pass? He looks very frustrated at the moment that we aren’t spotting his movement.

And of course, our senile manager has substituted him at 60-70 minutes in every league match so far. Strikers tend to thrive late on when the other side is tired, just look at how many goals Lukaku has gotten late on in matches this season.

I think he hasn’t been given the proper weapons to succeed as well as he can so far, but has impressed me enough regardless.

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Laca is only averaging 2 shots per game. Definitely some credence to the idea he isn’t being supplied effectively enough.

Current system and first 11 composition does’t really suit him.

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Exactly, think of how many opportunities we are creating? In fact, yesterday Lacazette was the most creative player in the first half. One move in particular he showed his class when he lobbed the one defender and than almost chipped it to Welbeck.

Let alone the striker position. The lack of proper signings in the age range of 18-23 is something that frustrates me. The signings since '10 in that area of the market aren’t convincing (Chamberlain, Chambers, Holding). That was one of his strenghts. Ljungberg, Henry, Vieira, Toure, Anelka, Lauren, van Persie, Nasri even Flamini and Adebayor to an extend. That and the 4-4-2 are always going to be the two biggest ‘what-if’s’ for me regarding Wenger’s post-2009 Arsenal career. We had everything that makes less richer clubs like Dortmund, Monaco competitive now and we went away from it.

That a terrible idea, let’s say that 2 in years Giroud becomes even shittier but the young striker isn’t ready yet, Plus considering Giroud isn’t good right now to be our starting striker and probably neve was.

The other option allow you to develop the prospect while having also taking advantage of Lacazette prime years.

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Giroud will pretty much maintain the same level of performance well into his 30s. Provided he keeps fit and remains motivated, I see no reason why his standard of performance will dip as he ages. He pretty much assures you a league goal return in the mid teens.

I think a striking prospect will get alot more starts in the league rotating with Giroud. By the time he’s ‘ready’ he’ll find it quite easy to displace Giroud within a couple of seasons. This is an ideal situation imo. Giroud himself is very unlikely to kick up a fuss and we retain his offensive ability in the air whilst the young striker bring a contrasting style based on pace

Reality is a young striking prospect isn’t getting serious game time and consecutive starts, which is crucial to his development, with a record signing Lacazette still in his prime expecting to the the main man here.

If we had a serious striking talent with a obvious high ceiling like Jesus, Iheanacho, Dolberg, Dembele etc you think they’d be satisfied playing waiting in the wings still Laca starts to decline in 4/5 years? Most of these guys are between 19 - 22, which are crucial years in a footballers development, they need alot of football and they’s need it now.

They wouldn’t be content with Cup starts or sub apps and on the other hand I doubt Laca would be keen on conceding starts and minutes in the later stages of his prime.

Keeping Giroud and signing a young striking prospect strikes me as a more ideal situation which leads to more effective development and no upset players

Sanchez - Ozil - Giroud…
What is wrong in this equation??

No idea why Wenger just don’t let Sanchez, Ozil and Laca, the best 3 attacking players play together (enough).
The sub could be Giroud - Ramsey - Jack

I give you a news: GKs don’t work too much with the manager but with the GK coach & Arsenal have a terrible GK coach.

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Nothing ensures that Giroud will maintain his same level of mediocrity well into his 30s, Giroud is already not good enough. Chances are that age will make him even slower, will take away his jumping ability, will take away his stamina, age will making more vulnerable to injuries.
Aerial skill and crossing are some of the most overrated abilities in football, I’ll take someone that can actually play with his feet every single day over French Andy Carroll.

If the striking prospect is better than Lacazette then you sell Lacazette and bring another prospect, rinse and repeat keeping a constant flow of either players or money to reinforce other position, instead of keeping running the risk of ending up with someone that old and declining and someone that still a few years away.

I hesitate to judge Holding too harshly yet, because lets think about the situation hes walked into last year: A team on the decline with barely any defensive nous or leadership on or off the pitch. Even our best defender Koscielny isn’t an actual leader, he’s not going to be giving Holding a bollocking when he fucks up.

I thought he did extremely well at the back end of last season coming into a side that was absolutely lost, and he was part of the reason we steadied the ship and won a cup (he was Costa’s nightmare at Wembley).

This season he has been poorer but has also been managed terribly. I mean he starts against Liecester, gets dropped for Stoke and comes straight back into the side at Anfield? It makes no sense. We also have to accept that nobody in this defence is covering themselves in glory right now and the entire system clearly is dysfunctional. A young and inexperienced centre back who is out of form is not even close to being one of our main issues.

It isn’t so much about a cult of Giroud (I don’t think), it Is more about the devil you know and the ability/desire of the leadership to actually upgrade… right now he very well may be our second best striker… otherwise who? Walcott? Welbeck?

Giroud isn’t the worst 2nd/3rd option but no one really has argued we should upgrade 2nd/3rd options… I think that no one (including me) trusts the current management to actually do that.

What purge? Of players? Perhaps. Until the structure of the club changes and the board dysfunction is resolved, Arsenal won’t move forward even with a new manager.

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Oopsie daisy. :joy:

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Haha. I wish the cameraman focused on the guy for 2 more seconds

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He has been a decent striker for us, if not great, but he has had the luxury of playing with three of the PL’s most creative midfielders, Ozil, Sanchez and Cazorla.
After this season they won’t be here, and both Giroud and Lacazette are going to have to rely on the sub standard players we have at this level, to provide goal scoring opportunities, and for a player like Giroud, he needs several for him to score.

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https://twitter.com/MC_of_A/status/921027063116697601

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