Arsenal: Charlie Austin Could Have Solved Everything

Arsenal being held scoreless is nothing new, but when such an obvious solution was there for the taking, you have to wonder why it didn’t happen.

Arsenal have been held goalless before. And they’ve been held goalless with Olivier Giroud, the man often referred to as Arsenal’s only striker. Not sure how he got that nickname. It’s part of the game and it will not be the last time Arsenal fail to score a goal.

However, something about facing Hull City at home felt like goals should be scored. Even with the lack of a true striking presence. So what went wrong?

Easy – there was no true striking presence. The theme of the day was seeing who was in the middle of the box, waiting for service. There was nobody. Walcott and Campbell were wide right, Welbeck was wide left and Iwobi was outside the box. Seems a little counter-intuitive. Then again, Giroud needs rests and when Giroud doesn’t score, Arsenal’s goals per match drop from 2+ to about 0.75. Hard to score when you’re on the bench.

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That is a difference that should be keenly engraved in the head of Wenger and whoever else actually manages transfers. It is not a figure that a title-contending team should be dealing with. Without Giroud, Arsenal rarely, if ever, score. And even with Giroud, Arsenal can struggle. When that happens, options are incredibly limited.

So let’s play a game of ‘what could have been?’ One of my absolute favorite transfer rumors this past January was Charlie Austin. The English striker was finally ready to quit QPR and head back to the top flight. £4 was all he was going to cost. Not a bad deal considering the one thing Charlie Austin does is score goals – at every level of English football, no matter the opposition. And that is with QPR. What could he do with Premier League caliber talent around him?

Well, we got a taste of that when he first featured for Southampton against Manchester United. Austin put in the match-winning goal in just 11 minutes of play.

Yet against Hull City, Arsenal had so few options that Wenger had to put in his regular starters because the ‘numerous attacking options’ he had cited as the cause for no reinforcements could not score. And again, why couldn’t they score? Because no one was a striker. Welbeck maybe could have been but Wenger decided to start him out wide.

Austin was never going to steal the show from Olivier Giroud. At least that was not the idea, maybe he could have. He simply would have provided a fresh option off the bench. But not just an option, a proven, goal-scoring option that can introduce new ideas to a team with a tendency to shoot blanks.