GREAT strikers used to succeed each other seamlessly at Arsenal and Liverpool. At Anfield, Kenny Dalglish surpassed Kevin Keegan and later, as Ian Rush’s career was coming to a close, Robbie Fowler’s was beginning. When they sold Fernando Torres to Chelsea for £50m in January 2011, they spent some of the proceeds on Luis Suarez, who proved to be an upgrade. At Arsenal, meanwhile, Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Ian Wright, three excellent forwards who passed the baton to each other, were all ranked in the top four of a fans’ poll to determine the club’s 50 greatest players, along with Tony Adams.
Those are the high, perhaps harsh, standards at which the strikers at the two clubs will always be judged, as supporters don’t have to dig too deep into their memories to recall something superior. Perhaps if Liverpool had Sergio Aguero or Arsenal had Diego Costa there would be less nostalgia.
Despite their injury problems, Aguero scored 26 goals in the Premier League last season while Costa scored 20 times. Olivier Giroud and Christian Benteke, the current centre-forwards of Arsenal and Liverpool, scored 14 and 13 respectively in the league.
That’s the difference between the top strikers and those who, despite being decent, definitely belong in the bracket below. You could argue that Wilfried Bony is a superior centre-forward to either Benteke or Giroud, but he’s not going to start in Manchester City’s strongest XI. City possibly have a better striker who sits on the bench most weeks than Arsenal and Liverpool have in their starting line-ups.
A key difference between then and now is that when the two clubs were signing strikers such as Dalglish and Rush or Bergkamp and Henry, they were winning league titles and doing so from a position of strength. The players didn’t have to be the main men from day one. They could come in and adjust to the requirements of the club because it already had such a strong group. Seasoned players would come to Liverpool and not go straight into the team. That’s a great place to be. Manchester United were in that position for a number of years under Sir Alex Ferguson, too, where the spotlight is not on the player coming in. He doesn’t have to be an instant hit.
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Liverpool failed miserably in their attempts to replace Suarez last summer. Between them, Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert, the new signings, scored three league goals. The previous season Suarez and Daniel Sturridge scored 52 times in the league, one more than the entire Liverpool squad managed last season with Suarez gone and Sturridge injured for most of the campaign.
The scoring feats of Suarez and Sturridge also camouflaged how few goals Liverpool were getting from their midfield. Last season, the top scorers were Steven Gerrard with nine in the league and Raheem Sterling with seven, but both are no longer at the club.
I don’t see enough goals in a midfield of James Milner, Jordan Henderson, Philippe Coutinho and Adam Lallana. Are any of them going to get into double figures in the Premier League? Benteke has to be on fire and two or three of them need to contribute if Liverpool are going to come anywhere near the top four.
At Arsenal, Giroud has more support on the scoring front. Alexis Sanchez scored 16 times for them last season in the Premier League, mostly from the wing, while Santi Cazorla scored seven and Aaron Ramsey six. In total, they scored 20 more goals than Liverpool and finished three places above them.
In terms of attitude, you would want Giroud around your club all day long because he looks a really good type, but he’s just short of the very highest level, where you have to be sharp in your head and have quick feet. The way Arsenal play, where they dominate the ball and push the opposition back in their own half defending deep, limits the effectiveness of Theo Walcott as an alternative to Giroud. His biggest asset is his pace and he needs space to run into. If the opposition drop back onto their own 18-yard box, I am not convinced that Walcott is cute enough or clever enough to adjust.
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Giroud’s not going to decide the big games, in the way that Aguero or Costa will do. He’s not going to win you trophies such as the Premier League or the Champions League. The strikers out there who can do so are hard to get hold of. That’s why Arsenal wanted to buy Suarez before he moved to Barcelona and it’s also why their supporters now want to sign Karim Benzema from Real Madrid. Benzema is right up there with the best, but if Real decide they don’t want to sell to you then they won’t sell to you for any amount of money. If they sell Benzema, where do they go to replace him? That’s how hard these players are to find.
Sometimes you have to look off the beaten track to an extent. Liverpool did that when they signed Suarez from Ajax. He turned out to be a fabulous player, but there would have been a doubt about him coming from Dutch football because it’s nowhere near as demanding as the Premier League. There’s been a list of people who have come from lesser leagues and you don’t know how they will deal with the weekly demands of the Premier League.
In other countries, the big clubs sometimes get easy games where they can roll teams over. In our league, that simply doesn’t happen. Our supporters don’t allow it to. They demand that you have a go all the time. They want a bit of fire and, at Arsenal and Liverpool, they want a bit of firepower, too.