(Note: This article was written prior to the Norwich and Everton games so all stats reflect that).
Sometimes it is hard to remember that Olivier Giroud hasn’t always played for Arsenal. With only 6 games left to go for the end of the season, it’s a good time to look back and check the impact of the young Frenchman over the course of his debut season for the Gunners. He arrived in North London on the back of a fantastic season for Montpellier, helping them become the surprise winners of Ligue 1 for the first time in the club’s history and bagging the Golden Boot for 21 goals (and 9 assists). If the prospect of playing in the competitive English Premier League is not enough pressure for a new recruit from a different league, Giroud also carried a secondary and altogether more daunting pressure, albeit one he never asked for. With Arsenal’s talismanic captain of the last season heading to Manchester United, he was expected to fill the boots of the Dutchman.
These reasons definitely came into play at the start of the season, when Giroud seemed unable to find the net however hard he worked and contributed to the team’s results. It took him 7 games (PL, UCL and the Capital One Cup) to score his first goal for Arsenal (vs Coventry City after missing a penalty) and 7 PL games to score his first league goal for his new club (it came in the 3-1 win versus West Ham). Even though he hadn’t started all those games, it was still a slow start. However the signs were promising – he was a good, imposing presence in the box adding much needed height and muscle, his desire to win the ball in aerial duels was consistent as was his ability to create space with his movement for his team-mates to exploit, not to mention his tracking back, hold-up play and work-rate off the ball. Since then, there have been some stunning flick-ons and lay-offs among his assists this season.
However, even when he did get into a groove and develop a good offensive relationship with Theo Walcott and to an extent Podolski, one thing has been clear – he needs to improve his goals/shots ratio. Currently he has 16 goals and 7 assists in all competitions for Arsenal and while that isn’t a bad return from a player’s debut season, Giroud needs to work on his finishing. Too many times does he pull the trigger when a teammate was in a better position to score or just plain botches up a golden opportunity, and his wastefulness with chances is something that should be curbed. Especially in games where goal-scoring opportunities are hard to come by and scoring with a half-chance could be crucial. It is a trait that was common at Montpellier as well where he took 160 shots to score the 21 goals in his last season there (an average of 7.6 shots per goal). In the season before that he scored 12 goals from 89 shots (an average of 7.4 shots per goal) and as of end of January had 13 goals from 94 shots.
