Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
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.
Underestimate that first touch and finish if you want to. The touch was sublime and set himself up perfectly to take the defender out of the equation and line up a perfect shot. If that had been a Song passing the ball to RVP, people would be creaming themselves over the finish and downplaying the ball from Song. I've seen this before. I'm not taking anything away from any of the players. A beauty of a pass from Ozil but the first touch was important as well.

This whole concept of a striker holding the ball up and bringing others into play is what facilitates tippy tappy play in the first place. It's dragging players like Santi further forward, playing a higher line with the defence and leaves us vulnerable to a counter attack. What you describe is exactly why we have games where we require 500 passes to get into the opponents box. It's what we've been doing for years and we haven't been successful at it with Giroud.