This Valentines Day, I’m showing the love by giving you two posts in a day. This has been penned by long time Grover, Gambon, who you can congratulate or abuse here @TheMightyGambon… or in the comments section where he is normally found. Enjoy!

After the United game I decided to look at Giroud’s contribution in comparison to other PL strikers that have played regularly over the last 2 seasons. I’ve excluded players like Eto’o and Negredo who haven’t had 2 seasons worth of data, but included the likes of Remy an Lukaku who have 2 seasons with 2 different clubs.

It’s not my intention to single Giroud out, but this is objective data that cant be argued with, by fans, players or even the mighty Wenger.

It’s my opinion that we have 2 huge, glaring issues in the striking department.

1- Huge lack of quality

2- Absolutely no options other than sticking Giroud up top

Bendtner has started precisely one game this season, despite IMO being better than Giroud, which goes to show how stuck in his ways Wenger is, with a complete refusal to give us options.

I have looked at Goals Scored, Goals Per Game, Goals and Assists Per Game, Shot to Goal Ratio, “Big Game” goals and % of goals in Big Games.

Where 2 players have the same score, I have slotted the player with less appearances above the player with more.

Its worth noting that Rickie Lambert aside, Giroud has been the most ever present CF in the PL, playing 58 from a possible 64 games.

I could have tabulated this in one Excel table, but it would’ve been a bit messy and is easier to read as separate tables.

Goals Scored:

Suarez – 46 Van Persie – 36 Aguero – 27 Sturride – 26 Lukaku – 26 Benteke – 26 Lambert – 23 Rooney – 21 Giroud – 21 Remy – 17 Adebayor – 13 Crouch – 13

Now this table alone isn’t hugely telling as it doesn’t account for how many times individuals have played, as I mentioned Giroud has been played near constantly (which is an issue in itself).

Goals Per Game

Suarez – 0.85 Sturridge – 0.81 Van Persie – 0.68 Aguero – 0.57 Remy – 0.48 Lukaku – 0.48 Benteke – 0.47 Rooney – 0.44 Adebayor – 0.36 Giroud – 0.36 Lambert 0.36 Crouch – 0.23

Now this shows our CF to be in pretty poor company, as I’m sure no-one would be over the moon to see us chasing Adebayor or Lambert as CF options, nor would they have been if we were after these guys to replace Van Persie.

What I hear a lot of is that Giroud has some magic ability to knit the team together and an assist record as good as Bergkamp’s.

So below lets take a look at combined Goals & Assists per game, a very good overview on how effective a player is while he is on the pitch.

Suarez – 1.09 Sturridge – 1.03 Van Persie – 0.87 Rooney – 0.83 Aguero – 0.72 Lukaku – 0.64 Benteke – 0.58 Lambert – 0.55 Remy – 0.54 Giroud – 0.51 Adebayor – 0.44 Crouch – 0.37

Once again we find that our ever present CF is competing well down the league and nowhere near as valuable to his team as the likes of Suarez, Sturridge, Rooney and RVP.

Obviously an important measure of quality is goals to shots ratio. A great striker can struggle to score goals if he isn’t getting chances or playing enough minutes, and goals to shots will tell you about the quality of his finishing.

Sturridge – 1 in 4.8 Adebayor – 5.1 Van Persie – 5.3 Aguero – 5.8 Lukaku – 5.8 Benteke – 6 Crouch – 6.3 Remy – 6.4 Suarez – 6.6 Lambert – 6.9 Rooney – 7.3 Giroud – 8.8

This table really surprised me. Not that Giroud was bottom, that was obviously going to be the case, but just how much of an outlier he is in comparison to others. This shows that his finishing is significantly worse than all other regular CFs in the PL.

After the diabolical performances against UTD and Chelsea, where 4 easy chances and 4 points were thrown away, I wanted to look at how Centre Forwards compare in terms of goals in big games, as well as what % of their goals come in these games.

Big games are considered the top 7 teams: Arsenal, Chelsea, City, Liverpool, Spurs, Everton & Man Utd.

This means 12 games per season for top 7 teams and 14 games for bottom 13 teams.

Aguero – 11 Benteke – 10 Van Persie – 9 Sturridge – 8 Lukaku – 8 Suarez – 7 Lambert – 6 Adebayor – 5 Rooney – 5 Crouch – 4 Remy – 3 Giroud – 3

% of goals in “Big Games”

Aguero – 41% Adebayor – 38% Benteke – 38% Sturridge – 31% Crouch – 31% Lukaku – 31% Lambert – 26% Van Persie – 25% Rooney – 24% Suarez – 15% Giroud – 14%

* Should be noted that Suarez isn’t poor in big games, he’s somewhere in the middle, but his ridiculous record against smaller teams distorts his stats.

So what does this show us? Not a lot that a lot of us didn’t already know.

But it does give a fact based approach to how weak our Centre Forward position is.

Both in depth (Nick doesn’t ever play) and in quality.

In virtually every possible metric we are weaker than a top 4 team should be, and almost certainly weaker than most fans would have realised.

If Wenger came out and said he was after Lambert, Adebayor, Crouch et al to solve the CF position most Arsenal fans would be filled with rage, well I hope after reading this you understand that we don’t have any better right now.

Players like Lambert, Remy are equal to Giroud, and players like Aguero, RVP, Suarez and Sturridge are demonstrably far far better.

Catch me in the comments if you wish to discuss further…

Gambon