School night pints = Friday morning *boilk*
Not much going on this morning either. The only real news is the return to training of Olivier Giroud and, get this, it’s ahead of schedule. That’s right, conceptually this might be difficult to comprehend but what it means is that the player isn’t out for longer than estimated but will be back before the time-frame given when he picked up the injury.
Hang on, that wasn’t very clear. He’s back sooner than expected instead of being out for much, much longer. Dammit, this is almost impossible to get my head around. I don’t think this has ever happened before, at least not since I’ve been doing this blog.
Time, as we all know, works differently at Arsenal. Three weeks can be four weeks, six weeks, or a quarter of a Julian year. Six months could mean 1/10th of a decade or longer, and anything involving Abou Diaby is measured in gigaseconds. Poor Abou.
Yet here we are and Giroud, reportedly out until December and possibly even January, is back in full training and could be in the squad to face Manchester United. That his comeback coincides with that of Theo Walcott means the manager can finally play the 2-2-6 formation he’s been trying to get right all season long.
Giroud up top with Welbeck just off him, Alexis behind, Walcott right, Cazorla left and when he’s fit again Ozil as a progressive, hyper-false 4 DM patrolling the upper reaches of the midfield. Per and Nacho will just stand at the back watching because the opposition will never have the ball.
In seriousness though, having Giroud available again does give us an option we don’t really have at the moment. The desperation of throwing on Sanogo to get you a late goal in a game you’ve thrown away won’t be quite as acute when you can desperately throw on a player who might actually score.
He’s probably not going to get you goals against the top four sides, his record against those teams in the last two seasons isn’t good, but he is more than capable of scoring against the lower-lights, so to speak. Not quite a flat-track bully but when you look at some of the mediocre sides we’ve dropped points against this season – Hull, Leicester and Sp*rs – you do wonder if having him around for those might have made a difference.
Of course having him back won’t do anything for our defence or a midfield that runs after the ball like a pack of seven-year olds, but it’s good news all the same. It’ll also be interesting to see how the manager reintroduces him and Theo Walcott. Our attack hasn’t been the main issue this season, although there’s no doubt in my mind we could be more efficient.
Playing Welbeck as our main striker has changed the way we’ve played to an extent. He’s better on the ball than Giroud, comes deep to pick it up, but also gives us the chance to play behind the opposition because of his pace. The HFB does not list ‘pace’ as one of his key qualities on his Linkedin account, he plays with his back to goal looking to bring others into play. He’s much more a target man.
Obviously we haven’t seen Welbeck and Walcott play together so we can’t make any judgement on that, but on paper at least it would seem Theo’s qualities would be best complemented by Giroud’s game. Still, the manager now has an abundance of attacking riches at his disposal, which hopefully will help rather than confuse him further.
The only real absence is that of Mesut Ozil. We discovered yesterday that the German would be back in seven weeks which caused some gnashing of teeth and some more complaining about our injury record. While there’s never any issue with having a moan about our intensive care unit and the gaunt, limbless half-men that haunt it, the Ozil story was nothing we didn’t already know.
Five weeks ago he was estimated to be out for twelve weeks which means that it’s now seven weeks until he’s ready. Next week will be six weeks, the week after five and so on. Unless he gets a setback for Christmas, that will continue until it’s no weeks and he’s playing football for us again. That sneaky time eh? He’s waiting in the wings, you know. Anyway, as it’s too early for quaaludes and red wine I think some breakfast will do.
No Arsecast today because Interlull, but for some extra reading this morning check out Tim Stillman’s column from yesterday about players playing out of position and more.
Till tomorrow.
