Certain players seem to defy logic. In his four-and-a-half years at Arsenal, Olivier Giroud has regularly been criticised for his lack of deadliness in front of goal and yet this season, of players who have scored more than one goal, he is scoring at a faster rate than anybody else in the Premier League (every 69.8 minutes).
Is he the deadliest striker in the league? Of course not. Context matters, but there’s little doubt that Arsenal are benefitting from this new incarnation of the 30 year old as a player who is lethal from the bench. And on Sunday against Palace, he was lethal from the start – or, if not lethal, then at least capable of producing a truly remarkable goal as he converted Alexis Sanchez’s cross with an overhead backheel.
Giroud himself acknowledged there was an element of fortune about the finish. "It was all about luck,” he said. “I wasn't balanced. But it was a good feeling, you know." Perhaps it was, the finish at least, but the build-up was brilliant, Hector Bellerin picking up the loose ball after Lucas Perez’s sliding interception and playing it to Giroud in the centre-circle. The forward backheeled it to Granit Xhaka who helped it on to Alex Iwobi with space in front of him. He accelerated down the left and, although his pass to Alexis Sanchez was obvious, released it at precisely the right moment. The Chilean’s cross was slightly behind Giroud – or he had got in front of it – prompting the finish that everybody, surely, has seen by now.
“You cannot work on that in training,” Arsene Wenger said. “It is just a reflex. It was a fantastic goal at the end of a collective movement that our game is all about. After that it was a reflex. Any goalscorer is ready to use any part of his body to score. He transformed that goal into art. Art is the word because of the surprise because of the beauty and efficiency of the movement.”
There are two key aspects there. Firstly that the build-up was pure and slick and incisive, the sort of football for which Arsenal at their best are renowned. The second is the idea of the goal being instinct. It’s an exaggeration but you’d almost trust Giroud more with an instinctive finish like that than with a one on one when he has time to think. “There are strikers who are remembered for one or two or three goals and that will be one that stays with him forever,” Wenger said.
And it will be a defining goal, for its unusualness (albeit Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored one similar on Boxing Day in this Christmas of the Scorpion) but also for the way it summed up Giroud, a striker capable of moments of such brilliance and yet also a frustratingly unreliable presence. This season he has scored five goals from 16 shots, a goal every 3.2 shots, a remarkably high level of efficiency.
To provide some context, scoring with one in nine shots has always been considered roughly par. Diego Costa has scored his 14 goals this season from 54 shots (3.86 shots per goal) , Alexis Sanchez’s 12 have come from 65 (5.42). Eight of Giroud’s 16 shots have been on target, a 50% rate higher than Costa’s 48.1% or Sanchez’s 41.5%.
But that is this season. Last season he scored 16 goals at one every 6.31 shots; the season before that it was 14 goals at one every 5.0 shots. Giroud, despite his reputation, is a remarkably efficient finisher. The problem is those games, as against Monaco in the Champions League last season, when nothing comes off for him, when he seems overcome by tension.
But this season even the allegation that he doesn’t score big goals doesn’t stick. He turned the game back Arsenal’s way with two goals in the 4-1 win at Sunderland. He got the late equaliser at Manchester United. He broke the deadlock against West Brom and Palace. As Wenger said, he gets “important goals”. He is unreliable by reputation yet deadly in fact. The substitute’s role, and the diminished pressure it brings, seems to suit him.
