Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud believes that the Gunners failure to end the Premier League trophy drought this season is down to the “collective problems” of the whole squad rather than individual players, as per Evening Standard.
The North London club had a great chances of finally getting their hands on a League trophy after long time, but the Emirates club somehow managed to squander the opportunity handing the prestigious trophy tot he fixes.
Giroud was seen as one of the culprits for this failure, but the Frenchman has come out and backed himself.
He feels that it was a collective failure of the team and even Ozil or any other player should be equally held responsible.
Speaking to French newspaper L’Equipe quoted by Evening Standard, he said:
“Our problems were collective,” he told French newspaper L’Equipe.
“I’ve been less efficient compared to the first half of the season, but it is same for all the players, either Ozil or another.”
The striker has quite a miserable campaign this season, with his goalless streak stretching over double digit games. However he suggested that his goals in some games have been crucial for Arsenal, despite not playing well in some games. He added:
“We mostly talk about the striker because you are at the end of the line.
“I didn’t play well in some matches, it’s true, but I was also present in very important matches, against Leicester for example.
“In the Champions League, if we qualified from the first knock-out round it was also through my hat-trick against Olympiakos,” he insisted.
Frankly speaking a player alone cannot be blamed for a club’s failure and as Giroud re-iterated above it depends on all the players. However, the ultimate nail in Arsenal’s coffin has been the lack of goals up front.
His form was good in patches but as a striker you can have bad days up front and that’s not an issue. However when that expands to ten’s of games then any club in the world wouldn’t be able to cop with that.
I am not suggesting that he is alone to blame, as other players too should have taken the burden up front when things were not going Arsenal’s way. But I feel some players along with Giroud should shoulder at least some part of the blame.
There have been some good consistent performances from some players and that to some extent also includes Ozil and Giroud mentioning the German won’t please many fans, including me of-course.
