Blogger: #14
One of the great challenges in life is to write up a snappy title for your latest article. Whilst constantly handing out articles that resemble the underside of my toenails, we at The Four Man Wall haven't had too many issues with snappy titles. From "That's What He Said" to "I Did Not See It" to "Has Ozil Mesut It Up?", I think it's fair to say we've usually hit the target with the headline. However, this latest one has me scratching my head. I'm not sure if it's a hit, or one for the failure bin. Which is interesting, because the bloke we're going to be talking about is usually held in the same light. Sometimes he's the bee's knees, sometimes he's the bee's knees with an ACL injury. Geddit? No? Well, let's dig in anyway.
So, not too long ago, a certain Thierry Henry - who played a few games for Arsenal as their centre forward, bit-part player really - said that the current occupant of that role, Monsieur Olivier Giroud, wasn't quite good enough to win the league. Then another former bit-part player, one Ian Wright, famous for being Shaun Wright-Phillips's dad, said Giroud was good enough to win Arsenal the league, you just need to get players contributing to the goals alongside him. So, when two blokes who've amassed 413 goals in 664 appearances for the club between them disagree on the Handsome French Bloke (HFB for future reference), an insignificant blogger (yours truly) decided to dig deeper and see if Giroud is good enough to win the league or not.
Giroud is a player whose success I fervently wished for. More so than I do for most Arsenal signings, because he was brought in as a replacement for one Robin van Persie, whose descent into hell or a particularly foul gutter cannot come soon enough for me. He's got his limitations, but he's grown by leaps and bounds since coming to Arsenal. There are some flaws which he shall never be able to rectify, such as his obvious lack of pace and...
So, first off, let's examine Henry's charge. Does Giroud, despite being 6'4", fall short of the Premier League elite strikeforce? I'm going to compare his performance this season (his best season at Arsenal to date) with those of the lead strikers of title winning sides since Giroud's been around. So, the 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15 seasons shall be used for the comparison.
Don't think Giroud's good enough? Think Giroud's good enough? Have thoughts on Giroud's little dig at Henry or Henry's clarification? Drop in a comment if you do. Drop in a comment even if you don't, we don't really mind.
Thanking You,
Yours sincerely,
#14
One of the great challenges in life is to write up a snappy title for your latest article. Whilst constantly handing out articles that resemble the underside of my toenails, we at The Four Man Wall haven't had too many issues with snappy titles. From "That's What He Said" to "I Did Not See It" to "Has Ozil Mesut It Up?", I think it's fair to say we've usually hit the target with the headline. However, this latest one has me scratching my head. I'm not sure if it's a hit, or one for the failure bin. Which is interesting, because the bloke we're going to be talking about is usually held in the same light. Sometimes he's the bee's knees, sometimes he's the bee's knees with an ACL injury. Geddit? No? Well, let's dig in anyway.
So, not too long ago, a certain Thierry Henry - who played a few games for Arsenal as their centre forward, bit-part player really - said that the current occupant of that role, Monsieur Olivier Giroud, wasn't quite good enough to win the league. Then another former bit-part player, one Ian Wright, famous for being Shaun Wright-Phillips's dad, said Giroud was good enough to win Arsenal the league, you just need to get players contributing to the goals alongside him. So, when two blokes who've amassed 413 goals in 664 appearances for the club between them disagree on the Handsome French Bloke (HFB for future reference), an insignificant blogger (yours truly) decided to dig deeper and see if Giroud is good enough to win the league or not.
Giroud is a player whose success I fervently wished for. More so than I do for most Arsenal signings, because he was brought in as a replacement for one Robin van Persie, whose descent into hell or a particularly foul gutter cannot come soon enough for me. He's got his limitations, but he's grown by leaps and bounds since coming to Arsenal. There are some flaws which he shall never be able to rectify, such as his obvious lack of pace and...
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| He can't help that he's gorgeous |
Using the excellent Squawka Comparison Matrix, I could get the following numbers per 90 minutes. I've added Dzeko's 2013-14 campaign since he only scored one goal less than Aguero that season.
If we were to follow a very simplistic scoring pattern where the best performer got 5 points, the second best got 4 and so on, the scores would be:
Aguero takes first place with 18 points out of a maximum of 20. Van Persie is second on 15. Costa takes 12 points. Giroud comes in fourth with 10 points. Dzeko brings up the tail with 5 points.
It's a little inconclusive. While not exactly shining, Giroud's numbers do hold up respectably against the league winning strikers. One could certainly argue that the league winning strikers aren't the best strikers around (Look at Suarez and Sturridge from last season), and they certainly have a point. So, I decided to compare Giroud's season with strikers who scored more than the league winning striker that season. In 2012/2013, Van Persie was the league's top scorer, so we'll add no one else from that season. From 2013/14 we get Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge. From 2014/15 we get Sergio Aguero and Harry Kane. Take a look.
Using the same scoring system as before, we get
1. Aguero 14/15 17 points
2. Suarez 13/14 14 points
3. Sturridge 13/14 12 points
4. Giroud 14/15 11 points
5. Kane 14/15 8 points
Again, Giroud isn't exactly convincing, but to say he isn't good enough to win the league doesn't seem clad in iron either. If one were to take an overall comparison of all 9 strikers, the standings would be:
1. Aguero 13/14 31 points out of a maximum of 36
2. Aguero 2014/15 & van Persie 2014/15 26 points
4. Suarez 2013/14 23 points
5. Costa 2014/15 22 points
6. Giroud 2014/15 17 points
7. Sturridge 2013/14 16 points
8. Kane 2014/15 13 points
9. Dzeko 2013/14 7 points
Giroud is in the middle of the pile again. What's interesting to note is, Dzeko aside, Giroud doesn't outperform any league winning striker. However, does that consign him to the not-good-enough bin? It's too hard to tell.
One argument that could be put forth is that Giroud scores/doesn't score important goals. This prompted me to look at goals + assists against Top 4 opposition in that season.
Here, Giroud is bang in the middle of the pile again. However, this time, only Van Persie outperforms him from the title winning strikers. So, Henry wasn't exactly proven right, but it does seem that Giroud's performance this season is a notch below what's required. Or is it? Let's look at Ian Wright's claim that Giroud needs more goalscorers around him. For this exercise, we'll look at the number of goals scored by the top 3 scorers of the top 4 sides for the last 3 seasons.
There you go, teams where the goal-scoring burden is shared tend to do better. In the past three seasons, the team that won the league had the second-best or best attacking triumvirate around. If you look at Arsenal's top 3 scorers' contributions over the past 3 seasons, you'll notice that there is very little difference. The numbers back up Wenger's claim that Arsenal need another 10-15 goal player. That player could very well be Theo Walcott. If (Massive "if" at that), he stays fit and is at Arsenal next season, a front three of Walcott, Giroud and Alexis could contribute 45-50 goals in the Premier League. And the numbers suggest that that could mean a serious title tilt for the Gunners.
So, in conclusion, is Giroud really good enough to win you the league? The numbers suggest that he is...and isn't. Whilst he's probably not going to have a blistering season like Aguero, Suarez or van Persie did, Giroud is more than capable of nabbing 15-20 goals next season, which is enough to win the league if Arsenal can get two more players to do that. If/When that happens we could see Wright say, "I was Wright all along" on television. Quite the obvious joke, but it is better to make a crappy joke than make no joke at all. Really, ask anyone.
There you go, teams where the goal-scoring burden is shared tend to do better. In the past three seasons, the team that won the league had the second-best or best attacking triumvirate around. If you look at Arsenal's top 3 scorers' contributions over the past 3 seasons, you'll notice that there is very little difference. The numbers back up Wenger's claim that Arsenal need another 10-15 goal player. That player could very well be Theo Walcott. If (Massive "if" at that), he stays fit and is at Arsenal next season, a front three of Walcott, Giroud and Alexis could contribute 45-50 goals in the Premier League. And the numbers suggest that that could mean a serious title tilt for the Gunners.
So, in conclusion, is Giroud really good enough to win you the league? The numbers suggest that he is...and isn't. Whilst he's probably not going to have a blistering season like Aguero, Suarez or van Persie did, Giroud is more than capable of nabbing 15-20 goals next season, which is enough to win the league if Arsenal can get two more players to do that. If/When that happens we could see Wright say, "I was Wright all along" on television. Quite the obvious joke, but it is better to make a crappy joke than make no joke at all. Really, ask anyone.
Don't think Giroud's good enough? Think Giroud's good enough? Have thoughts on Giroud's little dig at Henry or Henry's clarification? Drop in a comment if you do. Drop in a comment even if you don't, we don't really mind.
Thanking You,
Yours sincerely,
#14
