Arsenal vs Tottenham: Olivier Giroud Being Set Up To Fail

Arsenal had a lot of things go wrong against Tottenham, but it all started with the decision to start Olivier Giroud in a match that he had nothing to do with.

As many of you know by now, I will always defend Olivier Giroud. Sometimes to a fault, I’ll admit. I say this because I can in full confidence state that Arsenal did not benefit a single iota from him on the the pitch against Tottenham Hotspur.

But to be fair to Giroud, he didn’t have a lot to do. I do not say that he didn’t benefit Arsenal because of any downfalls in his personal ability. This game was just built for the antithesis of Giroud.

From the first moment, it was clear this was going to be an end-to-end game. Arsenal’s counter attacks were launched by Alexis Sanchez, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Aaron Ramsey and they would push forward, looking for somewhere in the middle to send it, but there was no one there.

And generally speaking, there was no one there because nearly every counter attack began with the team falling deep, Giroud included, and defending as a unit. With Giroud that far back and given his lack of pace, he was never going to catch up in time to be an influence on any prospective attacks.

Then there is then matter of the long balls. To Giroud’s credit, he is a monster target and a reliable one. Petr Cech can launch balls forward with all the confidence in the world knowing that Giroud is going to bring it down. But bring the ball down to one’s own feet when hefted from 60 yards is no easy feat.

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It’s far more conducive to take those balls from the air and flick them on to a team mate or, at the very least, bat them down into the path of a team mate. But the way this formation worked out, Giroud had no team mates to give it to. Both Alexis and Mesut Ozil spent too much time out wide, so they were never in range. And Granit Xhaka and Aaron Ramsey both took their deep-lying abilities seriously and didn’t preemptively charge forward.

So in the end what happened is countless times Giroud would win the header but only be able to bat the ball down to a Spurs’ player around him. Because only Spurs were ever around him.

That looks bad when you watch it happen, but what else was Giroud going to do? He was absolutely set up to fail. Even his successes didn’t go anywhere because there wasn’t anyone around him to build on those successes.

I’ll admit that at half time I dreamed about how nice it would be to have Alexandre Lacazette slipping into the striker role in a game that would have favored him far more than his bigger countryman. Instead we got Danny Welbeck at the hour mark, and even then, he was sent out wide.

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This was a hugely depressing reminder that we are not properly equipped with the players that we have.