Maybe Arsenal don’t need a striker? By Twig
It’s probably to the pleasant surprise of most Arsenal and France fans that Giroud is one of the standout players of this Euros! With a direct involvement in 5 goals, Olivier Giroud is only second behind Antoinne Griezmann and is in a good position to finish as the top scorer of the competition. It is clear that one of Wenger’s priorities this summer is to get a new striker: after all we only signed Japanese prospect Asano, and made a very public chase of Jamie Vardy, which was eventually snubbed.
Looking around it seems there aren’t too many strikers around that we could sign. Recently, the Daily Express reported that Everton had slapped a £75M price tag on Lukaku. But England will sooner win this year’s Euros than Arsenal would pay that amount on a player who’s clearly not the finished product. You also have the likes of Antoine Griezmann who only signed a new Atletico contract about a week ago. And in any case, given his Euros exploits it’s unlikely we’ll be able to afford him anyway. The situation has become so desperate that a new story has come up, sensationally linking ex-Arsenal favourite Robin van Persie with a return to the Emirates! The striker all Arsenal fans want to sign is Aubameyang, but it doesn’t appear Arsenal or the EPL for that matter is first choice on the striker’s list. It seems we really are scrapping the bottom of the barrel as far as strikers are concerned.
So maybe we should just stick with Giroud? As a striker, there are few players that play the target man as well as he does. It’s not really the goals that Giroud scores (he doesn’t score too many) that are important to the way Arsenal plays, it is in the little lay offs that he provides to the more rapid players around him. Looking at the France setup, the combination of Giroud and Griezmann has been a delight to watch, with either player assisting the other in their impressive win yesterday night. If we fail to sign an A-list striker, which really look like being the case, sadly, then I believe we should go all out for a player in the mold of Draxler or Marco Reus. Draxler is a player whose stock is only going to rise given his undoubted talent and his newly acquired first-team status with Germany. If we don’t sign him now, then we probably never will. He is also a player that Arsene Wenger definitely has a keen interest in. (Probably the longest Arsenal transfer saga of all time is Wenger wanting to sign Draxler to convert him into a striker as he did with RVP).
Marco Reus is another interesting player, he not only scores but assists a lot, and will definitely take off some of the creative burden from the likes of Ozil. My hunch is that since Reus is a little bit out of the limelight at the moment (having missed out on the Euros), he might be the easier of the two players to sign at the moment. We could just carry out a silent operation at Dortmund while everyone else is engrossed with the Euros and is too busy to notice :-). However, Draxler is younger and seems to suffer less injuries compared to Reus so he might be the more reliable option. With Draxler (or Reus) and Sanchez either side of Giroud, and a more stable midfield as a result of the Xhaka signing, Arsenal might perhaps give Gooners less heartache in the coming season.
_____________Giroud
________Draxler Ozil Sanchez
__________Xhaka Cazorla
Monreal Koscielny Mertesacker Bellerin
_____________Cech
Twig