. . .Given that it took us until February last season to score as many as we have so far this season?
Erm, yes. We have scored goals, but most of the goals have come in a few games. 6 against Southampton, 5 against Spurs , 5 against Reading and 7 against Newcastle. So that's 23 goals in four games. Van Persie would have made the difference in those tight games. I.e the 0-0's vs Sunderland,Villa and Stoke.
Yup, I agree. I can recall a few times where I thought "**** RVP would have scored that". Like the artetas penalty miss.
yes you have, last season, you would've won against Fulham at home but this year you didn't, its in the big games that you miss i.e. against Chelsea.
a lot in my opinion, i know you've scored a lot of goals against Newcastle and Southampton but he was the main reason why your in the champions league this season
I agree that last season he made the difference. This year is different again. If we're over our early season patchy scoring form, as it looks like it might be, then Walcott and Giroud could go on to eclipse RVP's contribution - in terms of raw figures at least. I'm not making a case for justifying his loss, but I just wonder how much that might be by then end of the season, if at all ?
We miss him a lot. Our team is creating more than last Season but still scoring less. The bigger thing though is chance conversion. This may change with Walcott down the middle but I would still like to see us bring in another quality forward.
This sort of thread is why people sometimes laugh and ridicule Arsenal fans. There are few teams in the world that wouldn't miss RVP let alone you.
you would be challenging for the Title no doubt, would Walcott have got as many goals as he has you would never know
I'd love to have seen Cazorla and Wilshere supplying RVP, he would undoubtedly have scored a bucket load for us as he's doing for Utd. I have to repeat again, the OP was framed as a question. I'm not saying that we don't miss him, I just wonder how the goals scored throughout the team will stack up against RVP's contribution last season, and whether at the end of the season, we would have scored more overall, given that we have done so far at this point this season.
RVP won us our home game against Sunderland last season. This season we could only manage a tepid draw. He scored a double against Norwich last season. In our corresponding match this season, we barely threatened and lost. That's 5 more points we'd have at the very least, and I'm being conservative. He looks pretty unstoppable for United at the moment - he's single-handedly winning them matches. I think we'd be third, battling away with Chelsea, if we had RVP still. At the same time though, if you work out our points with RVP still in the team, you have to work out United's points without RVP. I don't have that much time on my hands but he must've won them 10 or so points this season, on his own.
Well we are also creating a lot more. Its about chance conversion. (This becomes problematic against the BIG teams where your chances are fewer.) Against Blackpool for example we created 34 chances - only 5 of which were actually on target. The strikers are not making enough of all the chances Carzorla etc.. are making. Who knows though maybe Walcott will make the difference.
We definitely struggled to score early on in the season. But it looks like Giroud has found his shooting boots, as has Walcott. It will be interesting to see how many goals are shared throughout the team this season.
the thing is how will Walcott and Giroud do when the game is tight and defences don't give them enough space.
Yes, we do miss RVP a lot, as SJW said, we've just managed to get some crazy score lines in a few games. But in many many games this season we have looked toothless up front, with even Wenger stating on many occasions we lacked 'sharpness'. Let's not forget that we just witnessed such a game, against Wigan, so let's not start getting cocky here or ahead of ourselves saying asking do we really miss RVP. Just look at how many games were we were poor up front, Sunderland home, Norwich away, Villa away, Everton away, Swansea home, Manunited away, in all of these games we lacked that cutting edge, that clinical world class player up front to make that small difference, and RVP would've been very very helpful in those situations, you're always going to miss an asset when that asset is as world class as RVP.
Erm, it was just last month and early this month when we were struggling for goals. 0 goals at Villa, only 1 goal at Everton in the first minute, 0 goals against Swansea, only 1 goal against League 2 side Bradford, even the 2 goals vs West Brom came from 2 penalties, and the goal against Wigan came from a penalty as well.
As others have said, we do miss him. If you think back to last season there were a number of games where a piece of individual skill from him won us games that would otherwise have ended with us losing or drawing. And again as others have said a lot of our goals have come in a few matches and its the same with Giroud and Walcott, a lot of their goals have come after we were ahead anyway so made the scoreline more flattering but did not win us more points.
