Quote Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory View Post
Not if you're drunk.

What's weird is that you've never rated Walcott on the wing. Or Giroud up front for that matter. We may see the combo in a game or two but I'm not convinced. Giroud is like a statue when playing up front and doesn't have the pace to make up the ground. If Wenger has the stats to prove he's better at scoring with his first touch, then it's no good him playing with his back to goal.

As for Theo on the wing, he's not a dribbler like Sanchez and can't penetrate a defence like that so we're depending on someone picking up his runs. That's why he's quiet on the wings against deep defending teams. As a striker yesterday, we held the ball in our opponents area and still managed to dominate possession in their half so any talk of us not being able to do that with Walcott goes out the window. It's easy to point to this game as why he can't play there but he scored at the end of the day and on another day could score a hat trick, like he's done in the past. Do we swap that for a striker that can go games without scoring or ever looking like scoring? We'll find out soon enough. I think he needs time to develop there and I really question Wenger's wisdom in playing him as a right winger for all these years if he's said his future is as a striker.
I don't really rate Walcott (anywhere on the pitch) or Bif. But that's what Wenger has left us with so these are the players we have to go with. Yesterday wasn't really about Walcott's movement, or lack of it, it was about a ball played by Ozil. Walcott has pace and he has a 1 in 5 chance of a finish in him. So how do you use a player like that? Ozil showed us. It would be tempting to imagine Wenger fuming inside at the vulgar way we exploited the Stoke defence while playing to the strengths of our own personnel. A great passer, a pacey 1 in 5 finisher, a big striker who can take the hits, isn't so great at finding the net but isn't bad at holding the ball up and bringing other players into the game. It's not hard to figure how you can put the three things together and come up with something at least workable, even if not so highly tuned. Yes, tippy tappy has to die in the process but thank God for that.