Arsenal’s pre-season games has seen our side score 13 goals in just three games. Our much criticized hitman Olivier Giroudgot the first goal yesterday. Our young striker-in-waiting Chuba Akpom scored a hat-trick against theSingapore XI and even Alex Iwobi, another youth player, scored his first goal for the senior side.
Wenger has already announced that Akpom will be staying in the squad this season, and yesterday he also said: “At the moment Alex Iwobi will be staying with us but for the others we have to decide do they need the experience to play somewhere on a regular basis, to finish their education.”
So now Wenger will have Giroud, Welbeck, Akpom, Iwobi, Walcott and even Alexis Sanchez all available to play as centre-forward if required this season. Wenger also made it clear after yesterday’s game that his squad was more than full already. He said: “On one side the questions in the press is, ‘How do you keep everybody happy?’, and on the other hand, one minute later they ask me, ‘Why don’t you buy any more players?’. So, if I cannot keep the ones I already have happy why should I buy more? I think our squad is well balanced quality wise and numbers wise because of the number of games we have we need everybody. Because it is a competition it is part of our job.”
Yesterday’s six-goal bonanza with six names on the scoresheet also showed that goals can come from many other areas that just the strikers, so Le Prof said about thecall for him to buy another striker: “Football is subtle. It’s not mathematics. There’s a logic in the game that means that you create chances when all of your quality players play for each other. Every game is different. I still say that after the game tonight we are open-minded but we are not in a desperate need, because we were missing Welbeck and Alexis who are big players. We did not have Wilshere who is a creative player as well. That means we have a good squad.”
So let’s be honest. If Akpom, or even Iwobi, can demonstrate they can score when given the chance, do we really still need to buy another hitman like Benzema? I don’t think so!