Who has moved already? And Giroud has improved every season he's been here, including a dramatic improvement last season, so why are you convinced he won't improve anymore?
Really? From what I can see, he's never got his sharpness back since his injury, he's lost his confidence and just makes lots of runs of the ball with no end product and never goes anywhere. If we were going to buy a striker to do nothing, I'd rather buy Balotelli as he'd be a hell of a lot cheaper and more entertaining, with the same out put.
Well Giroud isn't so we need to try something else. Tevez is, Falcao is potentially if got a run of games. Mandzukic is. Dybala might be and would be an investment. Either way, we know that Giroud isn't. So we have to try something else.
Martinez! You'd like to buy a 30 year old whose never played in a major league as our title winning, top notch striker???
The same Martinez who is 28? We need to try someone new. Giroud is a nothing striker who is good for finishing top 4, that's it. Treading water. We need to TRY things. We can afford to. We afforded to 'try' Ozil which hasn't exactly been a blazing success and we're still rich. If AW is happy to spend £16m on proven cack strikers who don't score goals like Welbeck I don't see why he won't spend money on those who have actually scored a lot of goals.
I thought the whole point was that we didn't want to buy 'make do' players (except Welbeck, who Wenger didn't really want to sign permanently) and that we were going to sign top, top class players to take us to the next level, not fill up our squad with just 'good' or 'ok' players, restricting our ability to buy class players when they become available. Tevez is/was amazing, absolutely top class - but seeing as he's been let go and has gone back to Argentina (or is it a Brazilian club?) with no big European club really interested in him, rings a few alarm bells. Mandzukic is very good, though seems very similar to Giroud, and indeed had very similar stats to Giroud last season (Giroud scored 19 goals in 36 games, while Mandzukic scored 20 goals in 43 games) with Giroud being injured for 3 months. For the amount of money Dybala would cost, it would be a big risk - maybe better to wait a year and see if we can grab Ibra or another proven top class striker. In the mean time we have Sanchez, Giroud, Walcott, Ramsey who all chip in a very good number of goals and we've displayed title winning form in 4 month periods over the last 2 seasons - we just need a season without major injuries, and some season long consistency.
'title winning form for 4 month period' is the biggest joke of a statement ever. Because you don't win the title playing well for four months. Playing well for short periods is what we've ALWAYS done and we've never won the league. Just needing season long consistency is easier said the done because we've proven long term that we can't do it. And it doesn't help having pap like Giroud up front.
Playing well for over half a season until injuries derail your season is hardly short. But still (again) we'll have to agree to disagree, as I'll never see things as miserably as you. You must have loved Alan Smith back in the day...
Why didn't we play well on Sunday? No major injuries, Sanchez just a bit tired. Good preseason, beat Chelsea. And yet same old inconsistent crap. You just know we could win 10 on the bounce now but then go through a turd period after that. We're inexplicably inconsistent and I think using injuries to excuse it is wishful thinking.
Don't think it's fair to blame it on injuries. I honestly think the type of players we buy and the way we train mean that our chances of injuries are greater than other teams. We had 25% less injuries last season yet still had the 5th worst injury list in the division. Even so, football is a squad game and when you plan who to buy, given our injury record over the years, we should anticipate this when choosing. I think the bigger issue was starting games slowly which suggests poor match preparation, a lack of a mobile & combative defensive midfielder, poor/average forward options, deploying central midfielders on the flanks which hinders any natural width and playing into the hands of the opposition by not showing much tactical variety.
I think having your best/most on form players missing for crucial and/or significant periods of the season can seriously effect your form - look at Man C last season with Yaya never fully fit and it severely affected their season, despite them having a between £50-£100m of midfielder on the bench to cover. In the same way Liverpool would have been a shadow of the side a few seasons ago if Suarez had been injured. True you have to compensate, but at the start of that season everyone was saying we had too many midfielders by far, and how were we going to play them all/keep them happy. Then we had so many injuries in midfield that we were scrapping the barrel on the occasional game.
Note: I'm not blaming everything on injuries, or saying that our inability to win a title is just down to injuries. All I'm saying is that they did significantly affect our form - particularly losing Ramsey when he was flying on form, and Kos and disrupting a settled defence.
But it's the spread of players that is the issue. We still have too many midfielders now, and another problem is that they're all too similar which means one or two injuries in specific places and we're screwed again. We have one DM of any note who has only been good for a few months. We have no left footed wingers and rely on playing central midfielders on the wing most of the time. Just so imbalanced.
Of course injuries play a part. Regardless of how they happen, it's ludicrous to suggest that they don't have an impact.
