Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory
But conversely he can do things other strikers can't. Back to goal he is very good at holding the ball up and playing in others around him. Ok hes not that pacy, but I think he will get chances with the right service. He always seems to get on the end of crosses, just needs to improve his finishing. But thats different to saying he can get marked out of games.
He's a relic and there are very few top teams that have a bulky slow player that holds up play. It's not needed and we don't need that sort of striker. Name a top team that plays regularly with a target man type striker?
No-one with CL aspirations. West Ham and Stoke mainly.
Exactly. The games evolved and hold up play strikers is a step backwards. It's funny because we were once the pioneers and moved away from playing with target men strikers and always went for pace, power and technically gifted players. Even with slow strikers like Kanu, he was technically brilliant and not a battering ram sort of player or a player that heavily relied on others to create chances for him. If Giroud is tightly marked, he's unlikely to create space for himself to shoot or for anyone else for that matter.
Giroud is not a bad striker by any means but this was always going to be the problem with any RVC replacement, he raised the bar to such a level last season that it was going to be near enough impossible to reach again.
We could have tried to sign a worldie but opted for someone relatively unproven who was riding the wave of his breakthrough season. You reap what you sow.
It was always going to be hard to replace RVP but Giroud just doesn't fit into our set up at all. He's a very un-Wenger like signing when you look at the history of strikers we've had in the past. He's very slow, average technically and not even clinical. I can't see him scoring more than 15 goals for us this season. It's going to be twice as hard for him in this set up because the service is piss poor as well.
After the 'no Plan B' era we have always opted to have 1 big man in the squad to at least give us the threat at crosses.
At the time we passed on Samaras and Zigic, plumped for Adebayor instead, and since then have had Bendtner, Chamakh and now Giroud.
The problem isn't so much with the style itself (though our crossing is such that plan B was never that effective), it's that with the lack of options now in the squad, the plan A we had with the Dutchman no longer exists.
Plan B1 (bigman holdup), B2 (fastman, ball in behind) and B3 (dribblyman, pulls wide) all have only functioned this season to varying degrees.
The one guy in our squad who potentially could play the false 9 role (Podolski) is never played in this way.
Your style of play is fundamentally informed by the abilities of the players at your disposal, so either we buy a forward to fit the style we want to play, or change or style. Giroud can be made to be an effective forward, but it may not be as an out-and-out goalscorer. It may be as a buffer and a wall for the 3 attacking midfielders behind him to play off and score the goals. A more selfless workhorse type forward who uses his physicality to move defences around.
In short, he could be our Emile Heskey.
I agree with that. I think Giroud could be decent playing with a strike partner or if we had better quality wingers that caused havoc. In this current set up, I doubt he'll flourish.
Speaking of Ade, the one thing he had other the other big men we've bought is pace and work rate. He used to drift all over the field and the more mobile he was, the harder he was to mark and keep a hold of. I remember Rio saying he hated playing against him because he was so busy. The rest lack that movement and that's why they get pinned down so easily. Bendy was slightly different because he'd have lazy games but could also have games where he'd drop deep and try to run at defenders as well. He wasn't super slow and static, which is why he probably ranks above Chamakh and Giroud in terms of usefulness. Some people will disagree with that but whatever.
Yep, good post.
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