Just the sheer mention of Olivier Giroud right now draws irate utterances of anger from the Arsenal supporters who have been moping inside the Football Transfer Tavern since last night’s terrible 2-1 defeat to Dinamo Zagreb in their Champions League opener.
One nil down when Giroud foolishly decided to swing out at a Zagreb player for a second yellow after a harsh first, it was a brainless act from the French international who then put Arsene Wenger’s men in a seemingly impossible situation with the Croatian side mastering a counter attacking style.
With Theo Walcott providing hope late on, it eventually wasn’t to be for the Gunners and this is starting to become an unwanted theme for Arsenal who in the recent past have thrown away games to the likes of Bayern Munich and Monaco while nearly pegging those sides back but not quite doing so come the final reckoning and full-time whistle.
Giroud has struck two goals this season, against both Crystal Palace and Stoke City, but his red card last night comes on the back of the player himself being booed whilst away on French international duty.
It seemed as if the player was frustratingly lashing out last night given these unwanted criticisms on his part but our Arsenal contingent have no sympathy with him given the fact he left his team-mates in a terrible situation and even before his red card, the Gunners weren’t playing effectively anyway.
With the Giroud haters out in full force on social media and around the bar today, we’re keeping an ear close to their conversations while jotting down the five reasons why he won’t ever be considered a good enough striker to win the major honours by Arsenal’s very high standards.
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Click on the image below to reveal the 5 things that need to change at Arsenal as soon as possible.
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Because Arsenal supporters have always been used to better
By default, an entire generation of 20-something and elder Arsenal supporters have grown up watching the likes of true Gunners greats Ian Wright, Dennis Bergkamp Thierry Henry wow everybody before them during their years under Arsene Wenger.
Given the fact these super strikers set the bar so high in front of goal during glittering Arsenal careers, it is only natural that any new striker who falls way short of those levels will be put down for it.
It’s of course not Olivier Giroud’s fault that his arrival at Emirates Stadium came after these greats had graced the club but that said, in the eyes of the supporter, Arsene Wenger should be more actively looking for the next Wright, Bergkamp of Henry.
While those players were one off’s of course, quality players still move in transfer windows all the time and with Giroud undoubtedly being a good striker with a total Premier League scoring record reading 43 goals in 102 games at the moment, it unfortunately falls short of the upper echelons where the likes of the aforementioned trio were performing, week in, week out.
What’s more, Henry himself even alluded to the fact that Arsenal needed more firepower up top last season, when prompted for his opinion on Sky Sports and it’s hard to disagree.
In the eyes of some fans, he’s guilty of being a ponce
If you’re a follower of ArsenalFanTV, you’ll know that Gunners super fans Bully and Claude always have a dig at Olivier Giroud over the fact he’s seemingly more interested in how his hair looks rather than putting the ball into the back of the net on more of a consistent basis!
While he’s more than proved he can rough it in English football since his arrival from Montpellier, what does ring true is the fact that Giroud can sometimes look like Bambi on ice up top with the player most definitely one of those pros who cares about his appearance with finely coiffured hairstyles and what have you.
In the eyes of old school Arsenal fans, this isn’t the type of striker they’d like to have at the club and especially when you’re a striker like Giroud who scores once every three games rather than every weekend like Thierry Henry.
Henry was also an effeminate member of Arsenal’s squad once upon a time but the difference was that he had that mean streak in his game and this clinical nature made the women love him as well as every other male Arsenal fan on the planet who may also wanted to have married him after his outstanding contributions to the team!
He doesn’t always take his first opportunity in front of goal
While he is capable of scoring around 15 plus goals a season, Olivier Giroud is not in that 25 goal plus title winning category with the French international most definitely missing a number of sitters in a full campaign.
We saw in last weekend’s victory over Stoke City how Giroud missed a sitter from only a few yards out ahead of following this up by eventually getting on the scoresheet and in many ways, this sums his career up.
A player who usually scores one in two or three games, you can’t really see Giroud ever developing more of a clinical edge when his missing of opportunities is so engrained in his nature.
It’s not only for Arsenal too with the player having been booed on recent international duty with France for exactly the same reason.
He’s been selfish and let his team-mates down before
Without harping back to Thierry Henry too much, he was never sent off in the Premier League for the Gunners, instead receiving 30 yellow cards in his entire Arsenal career.
While we all know it was a different competition that Giroud got sent off in last night, this petulance has frustratingly been displayed before with Gunners fans also being able to remember the home game against Queens Park Rangers last season in which the French international stupidly got himself sent off for headbutting Nedum Onouha.
Not costing Arsene Wenger’s men on that occasion, Arsenal suffered and had to toil to victory that time round however and this kind of selfish play by Giroud, putting himself before the team, is not the mark of a striker that can be considered good enough to win the Gunners a much sought-after title.
Because the short Sergio Aguero-type striker is in vogue
You’ll often hear many pundits talk down about Arsenal’s prospects of winning the Premier League title at the start of a season due to the fact they don’t boast a striker who can score 25 plus goals in a campaign.
The truth of the matter is that since the days of Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and even Robin van Persie, the Gunners haven’t boasted that world class forward who can clinically dispatch 90 per cent of the chances that are awarded to them.
With Arsenal supporters rather enviously looking elsewhere, the likes of Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero and Barcelona’s Luis Suarez are in vogue right now, not only regarding their goalscoring capabilities but also their tireless work rate and stamina.
Completely different strikers to the likes of Giroud, these are the kind that Arsenal appear to need in order to win a league title and just imagine if they bettered their offer of £40 million + £1 for Suarez from Liverpool in the summer of 2014.
