Arsenal: Olivier Giroud, Jamie Vardy Will Compliment Each Other

Jamie Vardy could be Olivier Giroud’s strike partner at Arsenal next season. Since Arsene Wenger is known to play one striker, how will they work together?

Arsenal look poised to capture Leicester City’s golden boy Jamie Vardy, providing that the 29-year-old accept the personal terms offered to him by the Gunners this past weekend.

The new England man had his £20m release clause triggered by the Gunners and is now likely to make a decision before the start of EURO 2016, according to reports from Sky Sports.

Vardy is nearly 30, and that alone seems like an aberration from Arsene Wenger’s transfer policy over the past few seasons.

We’ve seen stars rolling into the Emirates in recent summers that are 25 and 26 years old, but not a player who will supposedly be in the latter half of his professional career on January 1st, 2017.

Vardy’s arrival, should it happen, will make the Emirates home to two forwards who will turn 30 in the upcoming Premier League season. Olivier Giroud of course being the other, the two will be tasked with improving on Arsenal’s second place finish this season and dethroning “Fantastic Mr. Fox”‘s old side as champions.

Despite being born on days not too far, these two players have very different styles of play and it will be extremely interesting to see them work together.

This season Vardy has been the perfect recipient for dozens of long balls over the top and balls through the defense. Danny Drinkwater, Christian Fuchs and Marc Albrighton have been routinely providing excellent passes for him to run onto game after game.

That was the platform that Vardy vaulted from to ascend the goalscoring charts and break the consecutive goalscoring record. Arsenal have playmakers who are capable of that – Mesut Ozil, Santi Cazorla, Aaron Ramsey (when he’s actually trying) – but this season the opportunities for such a thing were limited thanks to Danny Welbeck’s injury.

Vardy is a less intricate and more direct player than Danny Welbeck, but it was so noticeable when Welbeck returned to fitness how much more direct Arsenal could be.

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In the period where Arsenal were not scoring or winning much they looked so out of ideas going forward. Vardy offers such a different style to Giroud’s hold-up play that it could give them that second option from the very beginning.

What would be even more interesting is if this transfer became the reason for a tactical change made by Wenger in what could be his last season with the club.

The style of two forwards didn’t really happen once until Danny Welbeck and Alex Iwobi did it to perfection against Everton at Goodison Park. It was another tactical anomaly of Wenger’s that proves he can mix it up when he wants – but he has lost Welbeck again now and if he wants to go out on a high he must mix it up when he needs to.

All the Arsenal fans saw how frustrated players were getting with Olivier Giroud when he was on his goal drought in 2016. Having not only another forward, but a far more prolific forward in the camp with Giroud will not only lift the Frenchman and pressure him to step up, but it will offer two different styles of play that Arsenal can make great use of.

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Thirdly, it could even result in a newfound big-man, little-man partnership of Giroud and Vardy that could do damage to opposing defenses with its plethora of threats. The move seems sound from a tactical standpoint, if anything.

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