Arsenal do have good striking options! by Sam P.
There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from the Arsenal fans at the minute, partly due to the fact that Arsene Wenger has once again been more careful with the transfer spending than all the other challengers for the Premier League title, but mainly due to the poor start we have had to the new season, in my opinion anyway.
I do believe that there would not be much moaning going on if Arsenal had won against Liverpool on the opening day and we could well have done but for a bit of bad luck, with the referee turning the game with a poor free kick decision on the stroke of half time.
Even then, Coutinho would not have scored that wonder goal on most occasions and we would have been further ahead at that point if the likes of Ozil, Sanchez and Giroud were fully fit and available. So can we just take a breath for a second and look at the situation with some logic?
Arsenal seem to have failed to secure the transfer of Alexandre Lacazette from the French club Lyon, but another way of putting it would be to say that Arsene Wenger has refused to pay a ridiculous amount of money, rumoured by some to be in the region of £60 million, for a player that he does not think is worth anything like that.
In fact, his comments reported by the Evening Standard this week about the quality available on the transfer market compared with the quality already in the Arsenal squad tells me that he was not really convinced that Lacazette would be a good signing.
The boss said, “I believe a club like ours is focused on giving chances to the players we develop in our own club.
“We have a few strikers who have a chance but if we find the right players we buy. But if you ask people ‘give me names’ they just sit in front of you — it is not that easy.
“We have Olivier Giroud, Sanchez, Theo Walcott, Chuba Akpom, Danny Welbeck and Yaya Sanogo who is still here but is injured at the moment — the players we buy have to be better.”
I really can see his point you know, apart from Sanogo. Even Joel Campbell has been deemed not good enough for the first team this season, despite some impressive performances in pre-season and in the first team last season. Would you really want a player like Lacazette to be our club record signing and be brought in to deny the promising Akpom and the likes of Walcott, Iwobi and the Ox their game time?
If it was a really top class striker guaranteed to perform in the Premier League that came in then it would be different, but with Lacazette I think Wenger is right to back the options Arsenal already have up front. Don’t you?