It was a great night for Olivier Giroud and France after a spectacular opening ceremony in Paris. Giroud was chosen to lead the attack ahead of Man United’s Martial, and had the honour of kicking the first ball of the Championship. The atmosphere was electric from the kickoff but Romania came at them and nearly shook the home side with a clear cut chance after just three minutes which luckily came off Lloris’ legs.
Giroud also had the honour (lol) of missing France’s first chance to score, and he was also the first French player to get booked. But all that was forgiven as he was also the first to get his name on the scoresheet and with Romania looking unlikely to score the crowd went ballistic. But our old friend Patrice Evra made a stupid tackle in Lloris’ box to give the away side a lifeline with a penalty which was duly converted.
France went all out for the win and pummelled Romania’s defence, but they had to wait for a moment of genius from Payet to win the game for them in 89th minute. Arsenal fans may be very quick criticise Olivier but the fact is that when he is confident and in form (like now) he scores in every single game. If he continues then Les Bleus have every chance to win this trophy.
But Sanchez, oh my! When he was flying last summer, he led his Chile side to win the Copa America and they were back amongst the favourites this time around, but him and his country are struggling to recapture the glory. In their two warm up games they lost to both Jamaica and Mexico, and then got beaten by a Messi-less Argentina in the opening game.
Anything less than a win in last night’s game against Bolivia could have seen them eliminated, and the first big chance of the game (on 40 minutes) fell of course to Alexis. He seemed shocked to be just yards outside an empty goal and hesitated just long enough for a Bolivian to throw themselves in front of the ball. Sanchez had said that he was exhausted, and perhaps he shouldn’t have played, but there is little chance of that when with Chile.
His team finally got the win, but had to wait until a 100th minute penalty to give them the full points, and only have to beat tiny Panama in 4 days time to progress to the knockouts. But. unlike France, Chile and Alexis are looking far from potential winners at the moment….
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Giroud is a good striker, our style of football just doesn’t match up with what he needs to fire home more goals (i’m sure he would love to be faster to break behind the line). You can never fault his effort on the field unlike many of our English core.
Our British core are useless to say the least,they’re a complete waste of wages,injury prone I honestly feel we should rebuild a new core and get rid of Walcott,Gibbs,OX,Ramsey,Wilshere,Jenkinson
Personally, I think this will be a big season for Ramsey. If he and Bale can turn it on Wales will be very interesting to watch this Euros.
The season he was arguably the best midfielder in the PL he was playing alongside Arteta for the majority of it who was more of a DLP than Coquelin is. If Xhaka plays the same role for us he plays for Switzerland and Mochengladbach it really could bring the best back out of Ramsey IMO.
Ox needs a loan, Jenks is fine as a back-up. Wilshere’s worth keeping around if he can keep his fitness. Gibbs has been loyal. He’s just simply nowhere near Monreal’s level and consistency. I’m strongly for moving him on if he wants to leave and bringing in R.Rodriguez.
If Ramsey were as good as iniesta and if Walcott was as good as griezman and if giroud was as good as lewondowski …if if if if …. Need to deal in facts and the fact is that if giroud and Walcott and Campbell are our attacking options we will not be competing on any front next season
Good to Girouds but he still need REPLACEMENTS!!!!
Giroud is an asset that can atimes be a serious liability. We can’t sell him, yet we can’t rely on him. Guy is a riddle!
Giroud is a great option coming on as a sub from the bench to change the game but we really need another main striker who can get us 20 league goals in the 38 games so we can challenge for the title!
Maybe a player like Walcott, Iwobi, Cambell, etc. should have been close to 20 goals along with OG and Sanchez.
After watching Payet score a wonder goal last night I can’t remember Ramsey, Santi, or Ozil scoring that many goals last season either that came close to Payet’s goal.
Goals should come from all over and OG considering he was subbed or came on as a sub more than held his own along with Sanchez.
Fair play to Olivier. Dude really humps and fights. But he’s a box2box midfielder, who somebody tried to convert to a striker…
You have point there, as he always seems to be helping out in defence, especially at set pieces and he is pretty good at that.
Anyone notice that shove on Payet by Giroud, after scoring that screamer? ? .. envious or what? ? and that cross for Giroud’s goal… what a ball.
I bet Wenger was in a boastful mood, about the quality of one of his ” I nearly signed hims” performance. ??
@FbG
Lol…Shove? He floored him.
What?… No. He’s about as much of a striker/CF as it gets!
Getting rid of our british core shouldn’t be a problem we can easily find better english players like Spurs did who aren’t injury prone for once,look at Ward-Prowse at Southampton he’s young and english with bags of potential with a great passing range and free-kick taking ability to boot!
that’s d thing I don’t get??? y do we have d worst set of English players…its either they’re injured or playing Shiite…is it dat Wenger just signs and tells dem ‘relax, I’ll make u world class’ …none of d English players have shown improved drastically since they signed…Mr ’10 years at arsenal’ can’t even make d English team…Rambo d Blondie is tryn to plays as a 4,7,8,9,10 all at d Same tym and mostly comes out looking foolish…arsenal players’ official media COO is just unlucky with injuries and when fit, either loses confident thereby playing Shiite or does not know which position to stuck too…’Mr arsenal’ himself has d worst set of ankles a footballer can have and will rather insult spuds(don’t mind) more than trying to improve as a player when fit…don’t want to go into d others but their story is more or less d same…look at spuds, their English core is flying…rose and walker where total misfits 2-3 seasons ago but they stepped up and look at them..heck, even Ali and dier who r relatuvely new buys r improving….if smoking shisha, partying hard and taking selfies made u world class, I swear we’ll b talking of d higher rank of world class for some players we’ve got……
That’s great for Giroud
Im happy he is scoring again
He will be a fatastic supersub for us
However, he went 4 months for us without scoring
Wish he had scored more last season