Bank holiday greetings!

And that concludes today’s blog. Thanks for stopping by.

Until next time.

Now I feel bad. I should write some more. Maybe one of those innovative, irascible ‘5 things we learned from smashing the Mugsmashers’ articles. Ok then.

1 – You cannot throw porcupines very far.

2 – A pineapple is, because of its prickly hide, quite a dangerous weapon.

3 – If a man is on a train travelling at 60mph heading south and another man is on another train heading north at 60mph they’re not men at all they’re women dressed as men.

5 – I can’t count.

6 – Neither can I.

Was there anything we really learned though or was it just a case of things that we already knew becoming more obvious? Like how Olivier Giroud is now a very, very good striker. I remember Liverpool signed Mario Balotelli the day he got injured against Everton (or very close to it), and that caused some annoyance amongst Arsenal fans who felt we’d missed out.

Choice quotes:

“Balotelli gives the Scousers a 20 goal head start on us”

“Buy Remy AND Bony. Should have Balotelli and Ba already anyway.”

“Not buying Mario is a big mistake.”

All those quotes are real comments on this site from around the time Liverpool spent £16m on a player their manager said they had absolutely no intention of signing a few weeks previously. He didn’t even make the bench against us on Saturday and from what I gathered from the TV people, it wasn’t because he was injured.

Now, at the time I completely understood why people were hoping we might sign him. There was the whole ‘Our main striker is banjaxed’ thing and some doubts about that striker’s ability to score goals in the games against the biggest teams. He certainly wasn’t going to score them out injured with a broken leg. Then there’s the feeling that, perhaps, if any manager could tap into Balotelli’s potential then it was Arsene Wenger.

He loves a challenge but at the same time he’d consider the impact a player might have off the pitch as well as on it, and while there’s clearly some talent in the Italian, he’s too much work. Hindsight is a wonderful thing of course, but here we are months later and the stats read:

Mario Balotelli: 4 goals from 25 appearances (no assists in the FA Cup, League or Champions League)

Olivier Giroud: 18 goals from 28 appearances (+ 3 assists in the league)

So maybe what we’ve learned is that Arsenal have a striker who has, in three seasons, improved greatly as a player. I know we lived in world where even perfection isn’t considered good enough by some people, but Giroud is right up there with Alexis for player of the season from an Arsenal point of view (and probably should be in the running for the writers/players awards too but they’ll probably give it to Eden Hazard or Michael Ricketts Harry Kane because that’s the kind of thing that happens).

When Alexis stopped scoring, having ‘carried’ the team in the opening half of the season, Giroud has done similarly since his return from injury with 16 goals in the 23 games he’s played. As much as any of the other key players in this team, he’s absolutely crucial to our recent run of form and, yes, you can touch on the Monaco game because it only serves to highlight the point.

When he missed those chances, when he had a nightmare evening that was totally at odds with everything he did before or since, it went a long way to costing us our place in the Champions League this season. It also showed that without his goals we’d be in a very different position overall. That perhaps there’s almost a reliance on him at times.

Against Liverpool that wasn’t apparent when we had four different scorers, but it was in the previous game against Newcastle when his two were what won the game for us. Interestingly, Arsene Wenger spoke after the game about the need for another player who scores regularly, saying:

We need another player who gets 10 or 15 goals but we have a good mentality and good cohesion in the team. There is something happening. You can see that.

He said he’d expected Ramsey to score more, but his season has been punctuated by injury and he’s not quite found his form (although I think there are signs of him sparking into life). He’s got Theo Walcott sitting on the bench who can provide the finishes but he obviously feels that’s not enough for him to earn a place in the team. So that he’s on the lookout for another player who can chip in with goals might be a sign of what he’s planning to do in the transfer market this summer.

However, going back to Giroud, even those who use the Monaco game to hammer home the doubts they have about him, must have to accept that in terms of this season, he’s up there with the very best strikers in the Premier League. Diego Costa has played 10 games more, but is only 2 goals ahead of him in the charts. Which isn’t to say that we couldn’t use a player like Costa, but that maybe certain players fit certain teams, and Giroud and Arsenal seem a good match right now.

Ok, that’s enough of that. James and I will eschew the bank holiday to bring you an Arsecast Extra later on this morning. As always if you have any questions or topics for discussion, send them to @gunnerblog and @arseblog with the hashtag #arsecastextra and we’ll do our best to get to as many as possible.

Until then.

Really gone now.

Seriously.