Arsene Wenger has moved to praise the performance by Olivier Giroud this weekend, dampening hopes of a new striker coming in in his place this summer.
The French international had been on a barren run of nearly four months without a Premier League goal, but ended that with his strike against Manchester City this weekend.
Wenger has moved to praise the impressive display of Giroud, and claims he knew the striker had a top outing in him.
“Olivier Giroud was questioned recently and I’m happy I kept confidence in him because I thought he had a top-level performance,” the manager told Arsenal Player. “He was fighting, he had control of the ball, he was finishing and he gave an assist.
“We showed a lot of character and the intensity of the game was very high,” he added. “We dealt well with what was thrown at us and Manchester City looked like they were doing absolutely everything to win the game. They are difficult to beat and we have shown again that we can get results against top teams.
“The fact we came back twice each time we were down, we looked like we had the response to score. I think we could have won the game in the end. Overall, it is a positive result.”
Arsenal fans are eager to see another top striker come in and displace the former Montpellier forward, but the recent comments will be a tough thought to process ahead of the summer window.
Arsene Wenger has continually been slammed for his failure to strengthen sufficiently in the transfer windows, and he now appears to have given himself the chance to turn down a new striking addition…
Will we add to our options up front? Or will he stick with the regularly-injured Theo and Welbz as well as Giroud?
Bob
Well, yeah. If you want a striker that’ll go goalless for 4 months in a row and still end up with an decent tally of 15-20 goals per season then Giroud will do the job just right.
King was right and always was, you cannot win the league with giroud leading the line.
Can we consider giving King Henry arsenal management after seeing what Zidane has done? Guadiola and henrique did straight away with Barca and so on?? For me its a risk worth taking.
What is this leading the line about. He is a Target Man. He does not run onto balls he holds up play and wins aerials. A very valuable part of the team. We have someone leading the line that should do that. His name is Sanchez on the left and whoever is on the right. It seems people want him to be someone that he’s not. He has scored 22 goals and 6 assists while not starting in many of the games. His aerial wins are just like tackles that win the ball back for your team. In fact if you showed yesterday’s game to an observer he would probably say that he had much more impact in the game than Aguero.
He battled the 2 Man City monster CB’s all game for aerials. Sorry but that is huge in my book.
One creates the situations based on what kind of players that are at disposal. If there is no target man, then don’t feed the striker with aerial balls. You say it’s a tackle rewinning the ball, I say it’s a way of passing the ball – and you don’t rate your striker based on the way he passes a ball, nor tackles for that matter. And you don’t want your wingers to be the main source of goals, that’s just silly. The main goalscoring threat should be the striker, then the wingers and midfielders may complement the attack with their abilities, as Sanchez does. I see your point, but I disagree. It’s like we’re playing with 4-6-0 as a formation when Giroud is in his dry spell period – with no natural goalscorers, and Sanchez being the closest (which by comparing to other left wingers like Neymar, CR7 and Reus, is far from being a ‘goalscorer by nature’)
I see your point as well but with a back to goal target your wings must score and score often. If Sanchez is not a goal scorer by nature which I agree he isn’t because he has no left foot then find 1 and find 1 for the right. If all 3 scored 20 plus goals then the attack is much more dangerous than a single big scorer who can be marked more closely and taken out of games.
so the striker should be facing his own goal instead of the goal he’s supposed to score? and you are here defending him that the wingers should be the one to score the goals instead of him? even sanchez is poor coz OG isn’t supposed to score goals, but sanchez does? you say if all 3 scored 20 plus goals then the attack is much more dangerous, what a funny comment. Barca’s all 3 score 120 goals a season, our 3 score 20 plus and you call them dangerous? 100 goals less and you are very proud just coz you want to justify OG’s inability as a striker? we have enough midfielders, OG should concentrate on his primary job (scoring goals) then the hold up play should just come as a bonus
What an idea. I think history has proved great players almost certainly don’t make great managers. You’ve given 3 examples- one is 3rd in La Liga with Real Madrid- one’s won 94 of 120 games with Barcelona- so could half of us, let’s be honest- given that squad, the other’s done well & is highly rated but hasn’t ever had a halfway difficult project- at City we’ll know more about him. On the other hand their are 100s of decent footballers who’ve failed as a manager- but no, let’s replace the manager who has made the biggest positive impact on any football club in our lifetime, with a great player who’s never managed.
Sir Alex Ferguson please… Taking manu from being what Everton is today to the third biggest club in the world, having been the biggest at a time.
Guardiola took a team full of stars that played like netherlands – many big stars trying to be the biggest – to the greatest team ever seen, with a collective with the base in La Masia. It’s not comparable to anything else. Ryan Giggs had a decent substitute for Moyes, Solskjær (although flopping with the stillborn job in Cardiff) does great with Molde, Simeone does superb with Atletico, Conte did fantastic with Juventus etc…
However, giving Henry the reins in 2017/2018 might be a bit rash. Let him lead the U21’s for some years, while the club invests heavily in talents for him to develop and form, so that by the time he’s potentially fit to take the manager role of the first team, the talents are able to become a central part of the squad. (wishful dreaming indeed)
Hahahaha………one thing’s certain
ALUTA CONTINUA!!!!
Wasn’t it clear? Suddenly the end of the season is here and Wenger starts playing Giroud in every game when he was soin such poor form. He knew if he keeps throwing him in every game, he will have one good game at least before the end. Enough for him to justify him not buying a striker in the summer. Gotta give it to him. Sufficient to fool the wise AKBs out der. And thats all he needs. Well done sir.
And then some folks wonder why some fans are going absolutely mental with Wenger….does he intentionally set out to goad fans? Sure looks like it because the man just does not see past his nose…he was even talking of how strong character of the squad is because we have a hood record against the top 4, ffs the top 4 all look like finishing below us and we still are not even sure of a top 2 spot, does that not show that the top 4 are all rubbish this season and not a sign we are anything special….i think the board should gag him and allow his assistant to do interviews henceforth because at this rate someone will end up physically attacking him(I WILL NEVER EVER CONDONE THAT)
He is just like a new signing!
Wenger knows that we need a world class striker, he bid £40m for Suarez. It is just a case of whether he will act on it.
Hahaha .. Wenger’s comments are neither surprising or shocking ?
Surely, everone should be immuned to Wenger’s ways, by now?
Personally, I just can’t wait for this ‘Wenger era’ to end!
The sooner the better! As watching the same old senario’s and listening to the same old excuses, is sooooo ???
The Wenger era will never end, you will have nightmares my friend!.
This is probably why Alexis was so pissed coming off and also missing a game there a while back. Alexis is easily one of our best players, it must annoy him to see the manager take him off over Giroud, even though he has something like six in seven now. I thought it was right to take Alexis off, but obviously Alexis did not see it that way.
We had no real choice in this matter, Wenger had to give faith in Giroud because he didn’t bring in another. He gives Giroud more faith than he gives Walcott, I can understand that. Writing this here only has me realising what we already know, we are seriously lacking up top. Danny’s energy and strength was a great remedy late in the season when players were tired.
Wenger, is a little bit of a gambler I feel. I believe he thought he’d have Danny for the most part to fill in when Oli start missing barn doors. Walcott got his shot, he asked for it and got it, I have nothing against a player getting his chance. But he failed miserably and must pay. We still had time to rectify that in the second window, but didn’t. He done the same with the DM situation, and even our CBs have been sparse over the years. He needs to get out of this mode and start believing the hype about Arsenal capable of rivaling the biggest clubs for players. So far liv is the biggest club we beat out for a player. Simply, fans have to see some players being cleared out, and one’s coming in of a better quality.
yeah i agree with you , i would for once like to see arsenal tapping up a player :/ you know like real bought bale barca-suarez or mancity – nasri etc. not just özil or sanchez who had to leave well not that i would say no to that 😀
Wenger’s gone mad.
After failing to break the record for the most assists because of a main striker that didn’t convert any of the chances he created in 4 months, Mesut will demand change.
We’re no longer a club of players that made their careers under Wenger and owe him loyalty for it. We now have a few players that made it elsewhere and won’t be afraid to speak up about it.
Last season we finished strongly, so the demand for change wasn’t as great. There was no pressure from the fans either, especially after FA Cup success. This season it’s a different story.
I think Arsenal will spend at least £70m on new players this summer. The thing is, given our financial resources and the fact we still have all the money we didn’t spend last year, we should be spending around £120m. We spent around £80m the summer we signed Alexis, so I don’t think that £70m is an unreasonable expectation.
Wenger will stick with Giroud GOD HELP US . Wenger will spend JACK he will put 2 fingers up
to the Arsenal Fans once again.
Still eulogising over Giroud, guess Mr Stubborn has not heard the expression “even a broken clock is right twice a day”.