da mrbet： On paper, the replacement of Olivier Giroud with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang represents a significant upgrade in a team’s striking department. However, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of trite football clichés knows, football isn’t played on paper.
da esoccer bet： More than that, in England – as per tradition – football is often played in the air.
It is undeniably true that for a long time now the top teams in the Premier League have striven to produce attractive and attacking football with the ball on the deck. For all of Pep Guardiola’s intricacies at Manchester City though, and Jurgen Klopp’s ‘heavy metal’ football at Anfield, it was less than twelve months ago that Sam Allardyce was introducing the art of hoof! to the expensively assembled squad at Goodison Park.
This season, of course, Neil Warnock has rocked up with a bus load of genuine giants who look set on discovering exactly who amongst this elite assemblage of football clubs really doesn’t like it up ‘em.
That’s all without mentioning Jose Mourinho’s propensity for parking the bus at Old Trafford.
[brid autoplay=”true” video=”255898″ player=”12034″ title=”Watch Arsenal’s opening fixtures for the 201819 Premier League season”]
In these circumstances, the talents of Giroud used to really come in handy for the Gunners. The tall striker’s strength and unparalleled hold-up play allowed Arsenal to give as good as they got in the route one stakes, whilst the Frenchman’s link up play was often used to bring his more diminutive attacking teammates into the game in the attacking third.
New Arsenal boss Unai Emery may soon, as he battles through what will inevitably be a gruelling maiden campaign for him in the Premier League, come to resent his predecessor’s desperate decision to offload the Frenchman.
The selling of Giroud was in fact an act borne of the reckless abandon that the fear of imminent unemployment instilled in Arsene Wenger. With no evolutions or innovations left to give, the ex-Arsenal boss resorted to the quick-hit of the transfer market, hoping the arrival of Aubameyang would inject some life into his ailing side as his tenure thrashed about in its protracted death throes.
The fact that the prolific Gabonese forward was cup-tied for the Europa League, which it soon became clear could be the Gunners’ only route back to Champions League football, hardly helped Wenger’s cause. Yet, so it was that Giroud, seemingly somewhat reluctantly, made the short hop to Stamford Bridge and improved the Blues’ squad’s average handsomeness rating in an instant.
Giroud’s value at Chelsea quickly became apparent as he was able to reprise his impact sub routine effectively for Antonio Conte. Even with the addition of Aubameyang though, who hit the ground running in England with ten goals in his first thirteen Premier League outings, Arsenal continued to struggle.
Ultimately, the Gunners failed to qualify for Europe’s elite club competition via either of the routes available to them, and their long-serving boss finally took his leave of the Emirates Stadium.
Emery now has to find a balance between getting the best out of both Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette. Both are certainly better strikers, in the traditional sense, than Giroud. Both are much superior finishers and will grab plenty of goals for the Gunners this season. The problem is their similarity. Picking Aubameyang over Lacazette, or vice versa, doesn’t significantly alter the way Arsenal will play their football.
On the one hand, this lends the squad consistency and will better allow Emery to maintain his preferred style in the event of suspensions or injuries. Conversely though, the lack of a plan B makes his team a rather one dimensional outfit.
Any side able to nullify Arsenal’s initial attacking threat is safe. The Gunners will spring no surprises, they will try no new approach, they have no fall back option.
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Giroud’s ranking as second on the all-time Premier League list of substitute goalscorers is testament to his value as an option from the bench. The 31-year-old has scored 17 league goals after having been introduced from the dugout. That is more goals as a substitute than he ever managed in a single top flight campaign as an Arsenal starter.
In transfer market terms, Aubameyang is worth far more than Giroud. His Transfermarkt valuation of £67.5million, compared to Giroud’s predicted price tag of £16.2million, is evidence of that. In terms of the value of his contribution to this Arsenal side though, the Gunners may have just gotten the bad end of a very big deal.
In the 80th minute at the Cardiff City Stadium this season, with the deadlock remaining steadfastly unbroken, Emery may look in exasperation to his bench and curse Wenger’s decision to sign one of the finest strikers in the world at the expense of an ageing squad rotation option.
That squad rotation option just led the line for France to World Cup glory too, without scoring a single goal along the way. It’s a funny old game.