Olivier Giroud

Yea striking a football is a weird thing to nitpick a striker

And I’m sure he could still take someones head off with a striked ball with the laces if he wanted to.

You’re not going to see many more better rates than scoring a goal every 89 minutes which is what he’s doing at the moment, that’s red hot for any striker. Also I think you’re underestimating how difficult it is for a striker to come off the bench and consistently score.

As for the nitpicking it IS weird when you’re using “putting your laces” through a ball as an arbitrary characteristic that makes or breaks a top striker.

That’s like Giroud’s specialty and he’s bang average.

Sure, he’s been doing it this season to good effect, however, just because he isn’t a great player doesn’t mean it’s any less difficult.

11 of his 15 league goals have actually come in games he’s started and it’s also worth noting that 7 of those have been scored against La Liga’s bottom 4 clubs.

Not trying to discredit Morata at all btw, I think he’s close to a sure thing and I’d be over the moon if we signed him, but these things should be considered, sub effect and opposition can have a significant impact on a players NPG rate, Batshuayi 14/15 is another good example of that.

Because the best strikers tend to have the best striking technique, ie being able to accurately strike the ball with the laces, which is something they have at a young age.

Strikers who tend to have good goals per minute as subs don’t tend to have great goals per minute when they start starting matches. See Giroud, Solskjaer, Hernandez

Still I think Morata might be a better bet than Lukaku.

By this logic Roberto Carlos should’ve been the best striker of all time.

Is there actually anything wrong with his striking technique? Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone comment on it before.

Not at all, that’s why it’s really such a weird comment. If you want to talk about striking techniques definitely you take that of Morata over Giroud, when the latter has like a 5 minute wind-up to strike the ball if it’s not on a first touch.

1 Like

This logic doesn’t work for me, because if you are going to use gpm to big up Morata you only have to look as far as Giroud to see that goals per minute can be misleading. Giroud is at 1 goal per every 100 minutes better than pretty much every striker in the PL.

Giroud has done superbly off the bench this season and probably exceeded expectations, just because it’s Giroud doesn’t make it a shit accomplishment.

That’s the logic that doesn’t work for me.

1 Like

The accomplishment in itself is good, however it doesn’t tell the complete story.

No you don’t Giroud is slower and more cumbersome but his technique is way better than Morota’s and he’s scored more impressive goals. A more dynamic Morata may suit us better but his technique is bang average.

1 Like

It’s not. Technique is not only about how graceful you look when things come off. Technique is also very much about the quality of your technical resources at speed. Giroud is hugely overrated technically for this reason, because aesthetically it looks quite nice when it comes off for him, even sometimes when it doesn’t. People like Morata, who are capable of playing and processing the game at a higher speed, while sometimes looking a bit frenetic/jerky in their movements, can get under-rated (though your comments about his technique are obviously totally atypical and rather weird, because his technique is good and his finishing ability is good too, the doubts about his technique would be more in his associative play). It’s a bit the reverse of the Ox effect, where it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking he has a lot of tools and nice technique when you see him do good things when the pace of the game/demand on quick thinking and improvisational use of technical resources that aren’t there makes people rate him technically.

1 Like

Giroud has scored more impressive goals than a younger player that hasn’t been first choice at some of the best teams in world football, hold the press guys!

As for the technique argument I really don’t see how one can say Giroud has vastly superior technique, Morata’s technique is impeccable and he’s already a better player than Giroud is now and is some way off his peak. Your whole reasoning of assessing technique is off.

Morata is capable of scoring all kinds of goals regardless of whether he opts to put his laces through shots which can’t really be quantified anyway and sounds like it was plucked out of thin air.

1 Like

Giroud is the opposite of technique. He is all feel and makes beautiful music when he is in “the zone” (that’s a basketball term). The nice things he does and the special goals he’s had are instinct and creativity based not technique based. I think Girouds best technique is on runs to the near post and finishing low crosses at impossible angles.

Also just my two cents. Side foot, outside of foot, and toe pokes are very underrated skills and almost lost skills in the “CR7 era” of shotgun free kicks and screamers from outside of the box. There would be a lot more goals if these skills weren’t so lost imo. Sad to see I love all of those techniques.

So would I mate Morata would suit us down to a t aswell.

I’d still sign Schick while we’re at it to tho he might not be at the level to be our fully fledged #9 atm but he’s the type player we should be looking for to play second fiddle to our main man up top.

Yeah either him or Dolberg as a striker we’re looking to develop would be ideal.

2 Likes

When Giroud has a split second to think or act he usually fucks up his execution. Go watch him in these rushed moments. But when he has all the time in the world he can execute a clean strike, as you would expect from any International forward.

Its these split seconds that make the difference between good and great. World class strikers dont need good time/angle/body position to produce a clean strike.