Skip to main content

Reasons why Giroud is the striker that Arsenal needs!

I am pretty frustrated with all the Giroud-bashing being done in the media, over how he is not the striker we can win titles with, over how he doesn’t score goals quite efficiently and regularly, over how he isn't quite lethal in the decisive moments and a lot more! For all the haters, the critics, and the neutral who do not know what to think, here are my reasons:


The provider/enabler: It is a clichéd statement that forwards are signed to score goals for the team. I wonder if this is true in present day football. Total Football as made famous by Cruyff, had every player playing in every position to the best of his ability. If that is so, why could a forward not be quite content with assisting goals rather than wishing to feature on the score-sheet always? Giroud isn't the leader in assists, but he is very much capable of playing the crucial pass with a little of trickery thrown in to win the ball, and move it forward for the others to latch on to.

Quick release: His link-up play is on par with the best in the department. No needless dallying with the ball at his feet. Playing a first-touch pass to secure the ball or to attack the opposition is exactly the type of play that he specializes in.

Physical play: His physique gives him an advantage in winning headers during a corner, or from a goal-kick, or to secure second balls. These are quite essential when your team is on the defense. He acts as a defensive midfielder during those moments, crudely speaking.

Thorn in the flesh: He possesses this uncanny ability to frustrate the opposition by holding the ball a little longer than usual, at the crucial moments. If first-touch passes are his forte, then the exact opposite of it, is another. Anyone who follows Arsenal’s games regularly, can relate to this fact. How many times have we seen Giroud drawing the defender’s ire or eliciting an yellow card or winning a non-existent free kick for his team, from positions of no significance? Football is a hugely psychological game, and the more you anger your opponent, the higher is his frequency of committing errors.

Tormentor-in-chief: He also fulfils his forward role quite capably. Give him a difficult situation to score and 9 times out of 10, he will get that goal for you. His misses from easy situations can be irritating to watch. Then again, nobody is perfect and all of us are always learning, aren’t we?


Considering all this, I say Giroud is more than enough for us to win the league. Instead of buying a world-class striker, we could groom one and keep him with us. The likes of Campbell, who has risen through the ranks, Jeff-Rene Adelaide and Alex Iwobi have shown great potential in the few minutes of playing time that they were given. With regular playing time during Cup competitions and as a substitute in League games, an upward shift in their development and tactical awareness can be observed. I truly wonder the need for us to scour the market for a striker! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Head-less and Tail-less.

Crisp. This single five letter word evokes many feelings and pleasant sceneries within us, only upon dwelling though. It may be the delicious crunch of a packet of chips, the refreshing atmosphere surrounding us or one of the many letter-assortments availed to emphasize an individual’s character, to name a few. I will portray this word in a completely new light in this essay, as that in relation to the broad canvas spanned by cyber-borders and its ilk. To initiate the discussion, let us take the case of Narendra Modi, the honourable Prime Minister of India. He ushered in a new paradigm of campaigning in the prelude to the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. Successfully wielding the weapon of social media, he lured the major demographic of India: the youth. That he won the election by a staggering margin is ample proof of what social media and in broader terms, what the Internet can do. The question being debated here is not the after-shocks of social media but the exploitation of the I...
Post a Comment
Read more

From stranger, to stranger.

Wow! It has been a long time since I blogged. A glance at the last post shows that two months has whizzed past and that I don't have a single post during that period. I hope to make amends for the involuntary hibernation by weekly posting from now. And so here goes the first of them. Trust. Every one of us trusts some individual in our passage towards higher echelons of life, don't we? But as we indulge in conversations with our peers, we find that some render trust generously while the rest waver under veiled gardens. Why is there a disparity when all of us are cut from the same fabric? The solution to this query lies under the oft-quoted answer "Our past experiences make us trust less!" So true, right? We meet a stranger on the road sharing our same taste and as the conversation proceeds (or not, depending on what our moms taught us!), we connect with them at a level that, in truth, cannot be quantified. Strangers on roads are not exactly potential candidat...
Post a Comment
Read more

Stop Ea'zh'th-qu'ack'ing!

I will bring to the fore two disturbing trends that plagued me whenever I stumble on it. These two are entirely unrelated. The first one being the pronunciation of the word "Earthquake" and the next being the sound that 'r' suffers in the tongues of Indians mimicking the Brits and the Americans. Yes, I agree there are other words pronounced wrongly but this particular word had the power to draw me in to a mode of introspection, albeit for weird reason. I have encountered gentlemen and women pronouncing the word as Earth-qu'ack'. They are not of a particular category. These gentlemen span the range of all the seven stages of life, yet most of them don't seem to be concerned that they spell the word in an embarrassing way. Maybe their teachers had pronounced it so, maybe they ignored the thorn in lieu of the bigger scheme, whatever might be the reason, I consider it  a blemish on their record, more so if they happen to be English lecturers. The correct pr...
Post a Comment
Read more