The value of goals has never been
more clearly emphasised than this season in the Premier league. There has been
a virtual frenzy of goal scoring this time around and it is goal power that has
placed Liverpool in pole position and goal power that has kept Manchester City
in a great position to pounce. While City and Liverpool have legitimately world
class strikers obduracy has been Chelsea’s main weapon for the most part but
they have also had an ability to share the goals and in E’To they have a player
who is in his twilight but still has that killer instinct and Torres can still
show touches of his former goal machine self. To compete in this league you
need a cutting edge in front of goal and the Arsenal had that with Ramsey’s
sparkling early season form, but for the long haul all the eggs seemed to be in
the Giroud basket, with Bendtner; who can be unpredictable and an unknown in
Sanogo the only other pure strikers, most thought that this lack of real
quality would cost us and it turns out that it has. That the situation may
possibly have been rectified in the January transfer window is all conjecture
but still one wonders “what if?” Even a Ferguson like temporary purchase
similar to those he made when he bought in Larson and Owen may have made a
difference. That would have called for expansive thinking and risk taking
though.
The whole summer Suarez situation
has vindicated Brendan Rodger’s determination to retain his prize asset and
shows that our offer was unlikely to see Suarez in the Arsenal shirt. One
suspects that had we upped the ante we may have acquired him and if Suarez had
led the Arsenal line I would bargain that we may have all but clinched the
title by next month: but that’s conjecture. We didn’t get him but didn’t bring
in a striker of his calibre either.
The squad has simply not been
good enough to cope with our injuries. Were we a club that had a good injury
record you could write this season off as an anomaly and therefore not expect
to have to dig deep into the ranks, but everyone knows that for some years now
Arsenal’s injury record has been
appalling: ergo a strong squad was needed. Hindsight is a wonderful
thing but foresight is essential.
Ramsey, Ozil, Wilshere,
Koscielny, Monreal should all feature at some point in our remaining games and
give us a glimpse of what might have been but going forward there needs to be an evaluation as to why
injuries hamper us time and time again. There are too many squad members that
simply can’t last a season and don’t look like they’ll ever be able to. If it’s
not luck, if it’s not that we have possession so much that our players receive
more challenges then it must be methods that lead to our perennially packed
treatment room. Has this been addressed or even thought of one wonders.
The purchase of Ozil was clearly
a step in the right direction and, as I’ve said before, the young nucleus of
Gibbs, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlaine, Jenkinson, Ramsey, Gnabry, Szcezny and
Wilshere are cause for optimism about the future but we have to be able to have
them actually on the pitch for a sustained period. There is always the fear
with our club that there are other ‘Diabys’ just around the corner.
The irony is that Giroud has
pretty much been fit all season and while he is certainly a good striker he is
not a Championship winning striker, he doesn’t rise to the occasion often
enough but he does carry the weight of that expectation: an expectation placed
upon him by the Manager in the first instance.
If we secure Champions League football again
that gives us a strong hand in the ability to attract players and with the
world cup ahead the shop window will be well and truly open. Most vital is that
we do what we failed to do last summer, and that is to go into that
ultra-competitive market for a world class striker and bring our money to the
table rather than leave it sitting in the bank; whoever our manager might be.
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so I said...