Arsenal to risk makeshift striker against Liverpool

Arsenal are reported to be preparing Alexis Sanchez to play as the central striker against Liverpool next weekend.

The Gunners have been actively pursuing a striker to add to their squad this summer, but have so far fallen flat on their face, and are now looking at their options.

Alexis Sanchez is now claimed to be in line to fill the void left by Olivier Giroud’s absence, due to his extended holiday following the European Championship run to the final with France.

The Chilean himself had been a doubt for the season opener after falling foul of injury on duty with Chile in the Copa America, but has now been taken to Scandinavia for a couple of friendlies, in hope of getting him match fit for the clash with Liverpool at the Emirates on August 14.

The club are expected to field him in a central role for the upcoming friendly matches, in hope of preparing him to help out with the lack of options for the role this coming season.

Theo Walcott was used in the position last season, and started well, but for the last eight months of the campaign, he failed to make his mark in the role, and struggled to get into the first-team squad at times, ending his hopes of making Roy Hodgson’s squad for the European Championships.

The former Southampton youth product has since declared his intention to stamp his authority as a winger once again this year, having previously pushed to be a striker for the Gunners.

Iwobi and a number of others stand in his way as he looks to break his way back into Arsene Wenger’s starting XI, but the striker role still needs bolstering this summer.

Can Alexis do a job for us against Liverpool? Is it too much of a risk?

 

Tags alexis sanchez Arsenal Liverpool Walcott

33 Comments

  1. David Ornstein saying Chelsea also want Mustafi. Reckon they’ll be able to complete a deal in a day, we’ll still be drafting up the paperwork till Christmas. If Chelsea end up getting Mustafi I’ll lose it

    1. Read it and weep! ?
      According to the reliability, of this fellow,
      NO bids from Arsenal for Mustafi and NO interest in Mahrez or Draxler! …. But a mention of a unnamed striker, must be Griezmann then lol ?

      David Ornstein 
      ✔@bbcsport_david
      #AFC interested in signing Valencia defender Mustafi. No bid yet + others inc#CFC keen. Also want a striker but not pursuing Mahrez/Draxler
      7:30 PM – 4 Aug 2016

      1. if we get Mustafi and someone like Lacazette I’ll be happy. We can work with that and find a winger solution in the squad. Anything less than those two though and I fear for us.

  2. Personally, sanchez up front gives me more assurance than giroud or even potential signings like lacazette. Its not a risk but a possible blessing in the long run.

    Discounting the players on holiday,

    Sanchez
    Iwobi Ramsey campbell

    The attack line looks okay and may just pull it off. I’m just hoping that they have a natural chemistry and share the same aggression.

    1. There’s a reason why most of us want another winger, and now with Alexis having to play up top it makes it doubly concerning.

  3. If Walcott is ready to commit to being a winger again, I am satisfied with the wingers we have, but it means we need a striker even more desperately.

    For a few games, until Giroud is ready/a new striker comes in, would it be so bad to have a front line of Sanchez, Akpom, and Ox/Walcott? Akpom is hitting his stride and is scoring right now. I don’t know how long it will last, but he has good skills and his movement and runs are good. I don’t think he will hurt the team the level he is playing right now. If Sanchez is ready to go, I think that should be the front line.

    The midfield is what I am really looking at. Xhaka looks good, but I’m not sure he and Coquelin are fitting well right away. Ramsey will be coming back in, and I assume Cazorla will start in the CAM role if his fitness allows. If not, that becomes a big worry as I am not sure Iwobi is up to starting in big games yet. We have plenty of numbers to make a solid midfield, I just wonder if they will have good chemistry and balance.

    Ozil may be back by then, but both he and Cazorla will have fitness concerns. I want the team to take them slowly as we cannot afford to miss either of them for long injuries again.

  4. I hope Theo stays until his retirement. We should make him our captain. We all love Theo and after retirement he can become our manager. We wouldn’t even sell him to China.

    (Reverse psychology for the Chinese)

  5. This is now what I call hopelesness.
    Rushing a player back from injury then asking him to play out of position.
    If you look at our most viable options for the liverpool game
    cech
    bellerin chambers gabriel monreal
    elneny xhaxa
    iwobi ramsey sanchez
    walcott
    This is just not right.
    And right now facing a packed liverpool team containing the likes of sturridge mane and coutinho it seems rather frightening.

    1. Hahaha ? Yep! .. Be veryyyyy afraid ?
      A nice 5 nil whooooping will get Wenger dropping his cheque book afew times, as his panic buying frenzy kicks through the gears! ??✈?

  6. Sanchez up front is an interesting experiment, but why was he not tried up front last season? Why do we have to make experiments in GW1, which in my book is an absolutely must win?.

    Ox looks sharp in pre-season, so I’d play him on rw. Ramsey, Cambell, Akpom on the bench, walcott not at all:
    Sanchez
    Cazorla OX
    Özil
    Le Coq Xhaka
    Monreal Bellerin
    KOS HOlding?

    Cech

    1. According to Wenger,
      Cazorla won’t be ready until the end of August.

      Oh And Sanchez was given a few games as striker, in the past! … You must have been sleeping at that time ??

      1. And he did really well as a CF which is why I never understood why we still depend on the headless chicken Walcott

        1. Hahaha ? Really? …. If my memory serves me right,
          He hardly scored and looked lost in that position, that’s why Wenger stuck him back on the wing.

          They say that Elephants don’t forget? ??

        2. Alexis was not good as striker. He needs someone to play off of, that’s why he’s so good for Chile. Wenger will never play 2 upfront even though he has in past squads :/

  7. Our makeshift striker is going to be better than our first choice striker for sure! I’d play Alexis up front over OG any day!

  8. I’m going to rant for a little so forgive me.

    So we haven’t won the league in over a decade and the closest we’ve came was last season where we still lost out to a team that just got promoted that season. Now the league is near stacked with some of club footballs most established managers and now we’re a week away from kickoff and we still virtually have the same team that couldn’t do it last season. Xhaka alone is NOT winning us the league so let’s be real. Preseason means nothing more than for just match fitness. Same players, same shortcomings. Adding more top class is MANDATORY!!! Why oh whyyyy would any manager go into the season so ill prepared, expecting a different result when this approach clearly hasn’t worked? Majority of fans despise this name but the last kit that I purchased with my own money was RVP’s last year with us and to me that says a lot. If either Alexis or Özil stays with us after not winning the league again I will be shocked and it would prove they’re just here for the cash. Though I’m almost confident they are more ambitious than that. I really like this seasons home and away kit but damn! Spend and I’ll spend. Teams have improved where they needed to for the most part and I’m really nervous about facing Liverpool with what we have. I understand the window shuts end of he month but that’s 9 points at risk where we lost the league by 10 last season.

    Come on Arsenal!!!

  9. You know what? ?
    I’ve had a belly full ( and thats alot ?) of Wenger’s hypocrisy and contradictional bull ? riddles! ?
    He has had two months to sort out our squad for the new season and he is already doing makeshifts and taking a big risks with Sanchez, who hasn’t had a decent rest for the past two seasons and he has only just recovered from a swollen ankle injury! ? wtf!.. When an extra £100 million has just been pumped into our transfers kitty for the deluded one to buy the players we need! ?

    Even Gazidis’s wants to spend the ?’ing £££ but apparently it’s wenger who’s telling him to calm down! ?
    If wenger loves playing poker so much and taking unnecessary gambles with our season, before it even starts then he should pack his bags and ?’off to Las Vegas!

    1. FG, i agree with a lot you have said , but a couple of questions
      1. Where has the extra £100m come from and how do you know it has been pumped in to our transfer kitty.
      2. With regard to wenger telling gazidis to calm down, the context was wenger defending gazidis against criticism. Wenger said: “I work every day with Ivan, believe me he is highly motivated to bring players in. Sometimes I have to calm him down. I believe as well this is a period where everybody wants to dream, and transfers bring dreams.” This is just wenger and gazidis putting on a united front. Wenger is not saying that gazidis wants to spend money and he (wenger) is stopping him.

    1. When he first joined Chelsea I likened his control to “a one legged man riding a Unicycle”. I couldn’t of been more wrong! He’d be a brilliant emergency striking option for us but I hope we don’t stoop so low!!

      1. @ArsenalDave
        I think he is still just as lethal as any of the younger guys out here now…As long as he gets the service, he will deliver.

  10. so its a new season …xhaka the only diffrence i dont think we are ready.i dont think we will add a player between now and the liverpool game.but still will support my heart out. hope players like ox and chambers step it up,actually they have to.

  11. Well we don’t really have any choice
    If Wenger had got another forward ages ago like other teams (Janssen-Spurs, Ibrahimovic-Mktharyan-United, Nolito-Sane-City, Batshuayi-Chelsea) then we wouldn’t need to risk Alexis.

    Welbeck is out for a long time, Giroud is unavailable, Theo isn’t good up front, Akpom needs more experience. So Alexis makes sense but still unnecessarily risky

    I thought Wenger had learned his lesson from last season. I guess not

  12. Wenger has mostly used the second string squad at the start of any season to great effect, most teams aren’t at full strength or match fit and he plays that Wengerball numbers game, throwing in squad players who are fit and raring to go whilst the first team get ready, we’ll win 2 of our 3 opening games and he’d rather that than splash 100m on 3 players and get the same amount of points.

    It’s why he’s called Le Prof, Bumbling along for the rest of the season not even being able to organise a nicely zipped up coat is why he’s called Clouseau

    His faith is staggering, unfathomable, admirable and exhausting in equal measure!

    1. With regard to the first game of the season my recollection is of two, both at the emirates, aston villa and west ham. We need to be the best our available squad will allow.for the liverpool game.

  13. In the olden days, If a player served 10 years at a club he earned himself a testimonial game where he would be rewarded for his long service to the club in a friendly game against a team of his peers and he’d pocket the money to make up for the poor wages they were payed back then.

    I believe Sir Tony Adams and Niall Quinn were amoungst the first players to donate their monies earned from these games to a charity of their choice

  14. It’s tradition in the UK to have a testimonial after 10 years of service at one club, he’s been at Utd for 12 years so was overdue his testimonial.

    In the past all the proceeds were given to the player as a thank you for the service given, in this day and age with the massive salaries of the players they donate all proceeds from the testimonial and other special events through the year to charities of their choice, in Rooneys’ case childrens charities, the estimated amount throughout the year is expected to be around £5 million.

  15. I think it would be a massive mistake to play Sanchez against Liverpool. Players need 6 weeks of pre-season to rebuild fitness that can last a season. Rush them back in less then 2 weeks and you risk injury now, early burn-out and injury in the second half of the season as a result of this needless rushing back. Perhaps you give him 15-20 minutes at the end of the game but that should be max.

    The three points against Liverpool are massively important but not worth risking Sanchez’s season over.

    Also why would we believe these rumors? Wenger, if anything, is a mathematician, he would have done the math and would have known before the summer that there was a good chance that Giroud and Sanchez would not be ready by the start of the season since both their nations were likely to go into their respective tournaments till the end. This situation can not have come to Wenger as a surprise. And I doubt his brilliant solution would have been to rush his most important player back early.

  16. it was so few times, the point is why, when wenger more or less knew he was not bringing in a powerful strikker.

    Secondly, the news on Caz, I hadnt seen that due to sleep, but what do you sugest?

    I say, smack Akpom in up front, Sanchez out on the wing, it should be enough to see off Liverpool

Comments are closed

Top Blog Sponsors