Four goals for Giroud in one week!
There is no Arsenal player that attracts more criticism than Olivier Giroud, despite his excellent scoring record, but surely he will have silenced his doubters with his performances this week. Not only did he get his first ever hat-trick as the Gunners executed the great escape in the Champions League but he also reached the milestone of 50 Premier League goals for Arsenal when he opened the scoring against Aston Villa with a very cooly taken penalty. Even better, that win takes us to the top of the Premier League!
I think the French striker quite enjoyed it himself as he told Arsenal.com after the game: “I’m pleased with that and I don’t want to stop here,”
“I tried to do a good job for my team-mates today and I did well with the penalty. I was the one who had to take it.
“We were very good on the counter-attack with Theo and Mesut and [got] another clean sheet, so it was a really good day. It is a fantastic week. We did a great job in the Champions League and we really wanted to finish the week with a win and to be top of league before Leicester’s game against Chelsea. It is nice and hopefully we can have a great game against Manchester City on Monday.
“I’m very pleased with the performance today and we are in a great position and even if everything was not perfect, we had a lot of chances today which is good for me and the team.”
Despite scoring on a regular basis, the criticism of Giroud comes from the fact that he also misses lots of easy chances when he is lacking confidence. Hopefully now Ollie can kick on and keep knocking them in against every team we face. Another hat-trick against Man City next week would be nice!
Sam
Giroud and Ozil are proving their doubters wrong this season. You may have a problem with their style of play, but you can’t argue with the numbers 🙂
Sorry to say that he remains a pretty much limited striker. 50 league goal in 4 seasons proves that. World class strikers score as many 50 in 2 seasons.
About his recent goal, almost all were served served on a plate. Apart from his goal against crystal palace, I cannot remember any half chance and goal he created for himself.In fact in today’s match, he was barely marked for his lack of threat. Theo and Campbell were the 2 considered as threat by Aston villa. Campbell had at 2 men on him all through the match and Henson followed theo all over the pitch so as to cut out any ball from the wing. this is unlike when we had van piersie or Henry who were the chief threat.
Let me get this straight – now his actual goals scored are not scored well enough?! What a terrible striker to only score 5 goals “served on a plate” in 3 games.
How many PL strikers consistently score more than Giroud? Costa was in great form last year but has been poor this year. The only true world class striker in the entire PL is Aguerro. Everyone’s favorite “I want” player is the highly overrated Cavanni who scores 16 goals a year on a dominant team in a weak league. Giroud is a solid player who is underappreciated regardless of what immature “grass is always greener” fans may think.
i think the thing w giroud is those easy misses (monaco etc). there’s a bunch of them and they really influence how fans perceive him. i would upgrade my opinion of him to “solid”. he wont do the spectaculars that RVP wouldve, but he’s quite reliable when he’s in form. i’d still like to think AFC could do better tho, but AW loves OG so thats not gonna happen.
I agree..the bottomline is OG is not the striker who will win us the league. He is a consistent performer who plays well when he has competition…but he is not anywhere close to world class- which is what we need if we want to keep challenging year after year. However he is not shit as we have made it out to be.
All said and done he is a support striker; we need to keep looking for a world class one.
Where is Theo Walcott more effective?
Right wing – thumbs up
Left wing – thumbs down
Sadly Some “fans” will never appreciate him
I think the combination of Giroud, Alexis, Walcott, Ozil, Ramsey will make up for a WC striker
We have WC with Ozil, Cazorla and Alexis. Giroud and Theo will be good enough to get us through. They just need a consistent run of good performances
The olympiakos match was a high point for Giroud because he scored a hattrick in a real pressure match for u
Btw What’s up with Moyes saying “the jury’s still out on Ozil”., is he high or just can’t pin point world class players
Who are the truly world class strikers? I see only a handful in the entire world (Messi and Ronaldo don’t count as they are not pure strikers). Lewandowski, Aguerro and Suarez. Other guys blow hot and cold but those are the only truly world class strikers. Finding a player who is clearly better than Giroud is not as easy as some fans would have you think.
Giroud has scored 71 goals for us so far.
All fans should be appreciative for those goals. That’s a very good tally of goals considering his injuries
He will reach 100 goals next season
He was the third fastest player to reach fifty league goals for Arsenal.. Only Henry and Wright were faster.
Facts and logic won’t go down well with a certain segment of the readership who believe world class strikers grow on trees.
Lets give credit where its due olivier giroud has really step up his game and has shown real striker prowness scoring some crucial goals towards the gunners cause! Coyg!
Look I don’t think ppl hate Giroud it’s just that he’s all good scoring against mid and lower league teams but it’s against the big boys he does tend to go quite. If my memory serves me right he hasn’t scored against utd,Liverpool, chelsea,spurs this season? If I’m wrong plz correct me know that’s 5 points out of 12 potentially with 3 of them games being at home and I’m certain he would have had chances in all of them with Mesut about. Giroud is what he is a 12 million striker he is good at what he does but not near world class like wenger tried to put him into the aguerro suarez etc bracket He’ll no.
Big test for him next week esp if sanchez is out against City, these are the games he needs to stand up and make a name for himself.
Thumb me dwn all u like it is what it is and barring biased fans the world knows it’s the truth.
One of our very best said so himself ” can’t win with Giroud up front” #TheKing#
Bayern? Is that good enough?
They’re rubbish….
He has scored against United
Damn.. People’s criticism’s of Giroud are always changing.
You highlight four matches in which I believe Theo started two, a blatantly obvious release clause and a quote from last year? Solid argument…. I guess the usual ‘not a 20 goal a season striker’ looks a bit ridiculous now with him sitting on 14 and we’re not even at the halfway point?
He would have hit 20 easily last year but for the injury. But hey, some people salivate over a guy like Cavanni who get 16 goals a year on a team that has no domestic competition.
I tell you who I do appriciate Ozil & Cech without them 2 we would be mid table that is a Fact
@jim A return leg????? Monaco last year???? Let’s not go there plz.
Like I said next week will be his Acid test
I could debate all night long. Not worth it tonight though as I’m happy we are top of the league and he is having another great year.
We are good at running down our players. Support the boys to do better. How good would it be for Giroud to score 30 PL goals all for Arsenal. Carry on boy. Icrease your tally to at least 2 per match in PL not the present 1 per match.
When Sanchez was rested at the beginning of the season, I think the rest of the squad knew they can no longer rely on Sanchez to ‘carry’ the squad. It’s the first time in a while where is not Sanchez and Co, or Ramsey and Co, or Ozil, Henry, Fabregas etc.
We have a team that are balanced, we finally have strategies if a key player is missing, a diverse squad, an walways positive morale, model professionals like Cech, Arteta, Rosicky, Mertesacker. Our best signing is making only one signing, I really believed it made the players feel valued and appreciated, two words that players like Sanchez, Ozil, Bellerin, Rosicky and many other players have said before.
If you ask me, who is our best player this season. There is no player that stands out, because really, every single player give out all their guts to play well for the team.