Afternoon all and a Happy Easter to everyone. The Arsenal are up in Hull today for a vital Premier League clash against Hull Jaguars or whatever the hell they’re called nowadays.
It has been, for the first time in a while, a generally good week, starting with out torturous but ultimately successful FA Cup Semi-Final against Wigan and continuing on Tuesday when West Ham came to town. We looked like a team that had played an emotionally and physically draining 120 minutes just 72 hours previously but we rallied after a slow first half and got the result thanks to two goals from Lukas Podolski and a blinding finish from Olivier Giroud.
I’d like to use some [Ed from the future: that should read ‘most’, as it turned out] of today’s blog to talk about both those players because they both interest me for different reasons. Let’s take Giroud first as I thought he showed great mental fortitude on Tuesday after his shocking first half miss, an error he more than made up for with what was an absolutely exceptional goal. On my recommendations on YouTube, an Arsenal Fan TV video popped up with the title ‘Giroud is the worst striker I’ve seen in 42 years of being an Arsenal fan’. I actually laughed, openly, but there does seem to be this widely held opinion of Giroud that he isn’t a very good player, which is one I simply can’t agree with. I struggle to to understand the source of this – is it his off-field indiscretions or a wider issue about him being a convenient player to criticise because we don’t have any other strikers when we really should have more strikers. Whatever the source of it is, please let’s not forget Kaba Diawara. Or Arturo Lupoli. Or Marouane Chamakh. Yes, I accept that Giroud is not Luis Suarez or 2011/2012 season R*b*n v*n P*rs** but very few players are. He still has 14 league goals and 7 assists this season. He’s scored the best part of a quarter of our league goals this term (24%), a percentage only bettered in the league by Wayne Rooney (27%), Jay Rodriguez (30%), Luis Suarez (31%) and Loic Remy (33%) (I got all those stats from the lovely folks at WhoScored.com). He is, in short, a very good player. Not quite the level of striker than you maybe need to win the league but a very good option to have. He’s strong, he holds up the ball well and let’s not forget his vital role in two of the best goals we’ve scored this season, the one touch wonder goals we scored against Norwich and Sunderland.
If Giroud is a player we all seem unable to afford any patience to, Lukas Podolski is apparently a real fan’s favourite but why, I can’t quite be sure. It certainly can’t have much to do with his output on the pitch, which is exceptionally frustrating a lot of the time. There were loud boos when he was substituted last weekend in the FA Cup semi but I thought it was a perfectly acceptable decision – he had contributed very little all game, apart from slowing down our approach play every single time he got the ball. He wasn’t the right guy to be on the pitch. He responded well to being hooked with a stellar performance on Tuesday night, 2 poacher’s goals helping us to the win but those kind of performances are very rare occurrences. I think the archetypal Lukas Podolski performance was against Swansea a couple of weeks back. He came on, scored on, created the other – great. But then was caught with the ball a lot and wasn’t really helping out defensively when they equalised. I get that he’s a happy-go-lucky scamp on social media, with this thumbs up and his jokes and his smiles but he is an infuriating presence on the pitch and the contrast in treatment between him and Olivier Giroud is an interesting dynamic. If you were to ask me which one I’d want to keep, my answer would always be Giroud as I think he brings so much more to the team. I’d say it with a heavy heart though, as criticising Lukas Podolski is like kicking a really adorable puppy in the face. It’s just a shame the puppy is bit ‘special’ and does loads of really cute stuff then shits on your carpet and breaks all your vases.
Anyway, less puppy metaphors, more Hull stuff and Steve Bruce’s side are our latest chance to secure 3 more points and inch ourselves closer to the warm bosom of the Champions League. A lot of press people have been calling this a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the FA Cup final and, to continue their terrible analogy, it kind of is, except in the FA Cup final, two of the lead actors from their company, Nikica Jelavic and Shane Long, will be replaced by their understudies as they’ve already performed in this play but for a different theatre company. Or something. I don’t know, it’s a shit metaphor. They’ve had a good season, wranglings over the name and direction of the club excepted, but they pose a real test. I think we’re in the best position we’ve been in for a while, we’re not having to bandage up guys with scabies of the legs and get them on the pitch, we have pretty much a full complement of midfielders, the option to pick Nacho Monreal at left back, though I thought Vermaelen played well there on Tuesday and Mesut Özil makes his triumphant return from injury. Cue scenes of rejoicing. The timing of the game means a win will heap even more pressure on Everton ahead of their later kick off against United so three points please.
Finallly for today, we did a new podcast. There isn’t actually much Hull stuff in it, but Steve does have a hangover and I get angry about UEFA and say some potentially libellous things about Michel Platini and his son. Enjoy. Up the Arsenal!
Gillespie Road 