First of all, Thierry Henry is an Arsenal legend and probably the greatest player to have ever worn the red and white of Arsenal. So when he says something, you listen.

He’s won everything the game has to offer (although not the Ballon d’Or which still irks me to this day because he should have won it at least twice) and his opinion is something which should be respected. It seems however that his remarks regarding Olivier Giroud have sparked some kind of debate amongst Arsenal fans.

His opinion was that like Chelsea, Arsenal need to invest in a new spine. That includes a world-class goalkeeper, midfielder and striker – and in Henry’s opinion, Olivier Giroud is not the man who can fire Arsenal to Premier League or Champions League glory.

But is that a fair conclusion?

Let’s look at the previous Premier League winners and the top goalscorers:

2014 – Manchester City – Luis Suarez (31 goals)
2013 – Manchester United – Robin van Persie (26)
2012 – Manchester City – Robin van Persie (30)
2011 – Manchester United – Carlos Tevez / Dimitar Berbatov (20)
2010 – Chelsea – Didier Drogba (29)
2009 – Manchester United – Nicklas Anelka (19)
2008 – Manchester United – Cristiano Ronaldo (31)
2007 – Manchester United – Didier Drogba (20)
2006 – Chelsea – Thierry Henry (27)
2005 – Chelsea – Thierry Henry (25)

So as you can see, from the last 10 seasons the champions that year had the top scorer a total of four times.

But interestingly, in every one of the last 10 seasons the top scorer has been playing for a team that has always ended up on the Top Four, and most of the time their team has finished at least second in the league.

So a world-class player who can score at least 20 goals a season is vital if you want to really compete for the Premier League title.

This season, with 4/5 games remaining, Olivier Giroud has scored 14 league goals. Chelsea’s top scorer, Diego Costa sits on 19 goals, although he has missed quite a few games through injury – and at the moment it’s Sergio Agüero who is top of the charts on 21 goals so far.

So is Olivier Giroud the man who can lead Arsenal to Premier League or even Champions League glory?

Sadly, the answer is no.

As you can see from the last 10 seasons, only on 3 occasions has the top scorer only scored around 20 goals. Most of the time the top scorer has scored at least 25 goals, scoring closer to 30 goals in a whole season. As it stands, unless Giroud scores a brace in all our remaining games he’s well off that total.

Now I’m not disputing his quality and what he brings to the team. Currently, he is our main striker who brings others into play – he does score goals and how we are playing at the moment suits his style. But there’s no doubt that if we had a world-class striker, we would probably be much closer to Chelsea right now.

It’s a point which has been raised time and time again, but would Giroud get into any other top sides? Would be get a place at Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester City? The answer is probably not.

Monaco was probably the biggest indicator that we badly missed a world-class finisher. You cannot argue that if we had Aguero, Suarez, Diego Costa or Wayne Rooney then we’d be a better team.

We’ve spent mega money on Mesut Özil and Alexis Sanchez who are both world-class forwards, but we just need that special striker to finish off the team.

Like it or not, Arsene Wenger needs to spend big this summer on a world-class striker who can score from nothing – which we’ve missed, especially in tight games which we’ve failed to break down the opposition.

I don’t understand how everyone seems to think that Eden Hazard has had a better season than Alexis Sanchez?

Hazard has been tipped to easily win the Player of the Year awards this season and to me that is preposterous! Alexis Sanchez has been far better and done a lot more to deserve the accolade.

On a straight statistical shootout, Alexis Sanchez wins hands down. Both players have (co-incidently) played 45 games for their clubs this season, and while Sanchez has scored 22 goals, Hazard has only scored 18.

Then we come to assists. In all competitions, Alexis Sanchez and Eden Hazard are both tied on 12 assists apiece.

And finally, we come to other match statistics:

[Courtesy of the Squawka Comparison Matrix]

You can see that Alexis Sanchez has a better shooting accuracy, wins more tackles and makes more interceptions.

So as well has been more effective in an attacking sense than Eden Hazard, he also works much harder for the team defensively (and we all knew that as we see him close down and track back for pretty much the whole match – in every game).

So individually Sanchez is better, and he is more of a team player.

Then we have other factors. Eden Hazard has been at Chelsea for 3 years now, so is much more comfortable in a side which he has grown and developed. Alexis Sanchez however only joined Arsenal in the summer and despite moving to a brand new country and having to familiarise himself with new teammates (who don’t even speak the same language as him) he has putting in phenomenal performances throughout the season.

Another factor is how the player makes the fans feel. How many times has Sanchez excited the fans? He tracks down players, shows moments of brilliance with his skill and can score goals from 30 yards. He scores all kinds of goals, including headers, and has been played in several different positions throughout the season.

Eden Hazard has a whole team based around his game and while he has been skilful, he scores similar types of goals.

Hopefully people voting will take a look closer at the facts when deciding who is their Player of the Year, but I fear that they will take the “easy option” and just vote for the Chelsea man.

1. Alexis Sanchez is not a team player

There is no doubt that Alexis Sanchez is a special player. He’s scored 22 goals for Arsenal already this season and scored the goals which put us through yesterday – but for all his talents he’s not a team player.

Arsenal are all about incisive passing and movement but Sanchez is a player where this breaks down. Far too many times yesterday he lost the ball (he wasn’t the only one) and when a simple pass wide was the better option he always opted to play it short so he could get the return ball. He dribbles far too much, losing the ball, and at times wants to do everything himself. If he could just not “hog” the ball as much he’d be the perfect player  – because his work rate, desire and determination are exemplary.

2. Arsenal are always far too complacent against the “smaller” teams

In last seasons FA Cup semi-final we scraped passed Wigan on penalties, and even against Hull City Tigers in the final we struggled, conceding two goals before staging a brave fight back. But why do we always struggle against “lower” sides?

Reading were excellent yesterday, and gave absolutely everything. And that’s the problem – Reading clearly wanted it more. Talent-wise, Arsenal hold all the aces but Reading were the team who would, as Arsene put it, “die on the pitch”. So it begs the question, where was Arsenal’s passion?

Why didn’t Arsenal “give everything on the pitch” to try and win? We were lethargic, sloppy and where as bad as Reading were good. If it wasn’t for the mistake by Adam Federici for the winner, who knows what would have happened? When it comes down to the lottery of penalties Reading had a real chance of knocking us out – and we wouldn’t have anyone else to blame except ourselves.

It’s a dangerous game and don’t forget we did the same against Monaco in the Champions League in the first leg – we thought we could just turn up and win.

3. Arsene Wenger will never be able to make a good substitution

Aaron Ramsey badly needed replacing yesterday and while the Giroud substitution was obvious, Arsene is afraid to make a bold move and Walcott should have been on before the end of the 90 minutes. Ramsey was struggling on the right hand side and ended up drifting inside, meaning Arsenal were far too narrow. Özil, Cazorla, Coquelin and Sanchez were all in the middle so Ramsey was pretty much redundant.

There are too many games when we’re losing and need a change from the bench but most of the time, it never comes and Arsene just seems to “hope for the best”.

4. Mesut  Özil is showing how important he is to Arsenal

A lacklustre Arsenal were struggling yesterday but Mesut Özil was our best player by a country mile. Only he, Koscielny and Coquelin (and then Giroud when he came on) put in good performances and if it wasn’t for his beautifully clipped pass to Sanchez for the opening goal God knows where we would be today – quite possibly devastated we missed out on the FA Cup final.

As well as the assist, Özil came agonisingly close with a direct freekick and took the corner which Per Mertesacker really should have scored from. His movement was excellent and his passing was precise – when most of our players kept losing the ball.

5. Aaron Ramsey takes far too many touches on the ball

When a team like Reading are setup to play on the break, the one thing you don’t want to do is give them time to get men behind the ball and re-group. But every time Aaron Ramsey got the ball he slowed the game down and by the time he released the pass the chance to attack had gone. Most Arsenal players take 2/3 touches on the ball but Aaron Ramsey takes about 7! For a side like Arsenal who pride themselves on quick movement and passing, Ramsey’s persistence on taking far too many touches is infuriating.

In January 2013 when Theo Walcott had 6 months remaining before he was free to speak to other clubs, he signed a new deal worth £100,000 a week, making him the highest paid player at the club.

Previous to the latest deal he was on £55,000 a week, and as well as a hefty paid rise he also received a £3 million bonus for staying “loyal”. Ahem.

You could say he took advantage of Arsenal’s poor situation at the time – we were bedding in new signings such as Lukas Podolski, Olivier Giroud and Santi Cazorla at a time when we were still affected by the loss of Robin van Persie.

Before January 2013, Arsene had opted to mainly use Theo Walcott as a substitute while the protracted transfer talks stalled. He had been offered £80,000 and £90,000 during negotiations, but declined them both. He was in a very strong position and rightly or wrongly, managed to engineer a deal which was beyond his worth. Arsene wanted him to sign a 5 year deal worth £90,000 a week, while Theo Walcott ended up getting a 3 and a half year deal worth £100,000 a week.

Fast forward 24 months, and the situation has completely changed.

We are at exactly the same position yet again – Arsenal and Theo Walcott are trying to negotiate a new deal but the pacy forward holds a completely different hand these days. Whereas 2 years ago he held a royal flush, now he holds a pair. A pair of 2’s.

He’s been injured for lengthy periods and hasn’t been worth his £100,000 a week by a long shot. Also in that time Olivier Giroud has improved and become Arsenal’s most important attacker. We’ve also brought in Mesut Özil and Alexis Sanchez, two truly world class forwards. In essence, Walcott’s absence has hardly been noticed.

Arsene Wenger has come out and publicly stated that while Theo is “quick on the pitch, he’s not necessarily quick when it comes to contract negotiations”. And if that wasn’t spiky enough for you, Theo has had to come out and deny a “bust up” with Arsene Wenger.

Clearly the current position is this – Arsene feels Walcott and his representatives held Arsenal over a barrel 2 years ago and would rather offload the striker now rather than increase a wage he feels is already undeserved. Arsene also holds all the aces as in terms of the squad and team he’s on the periphery. The sad fact for Theo is that basically, we don’t actually need him.

The team is on a great run of form and we’ve done it without Walcott. And in that run, one of the games we lost was at Tottenham when arguably, Walcott was culpable for their winning goal when he failed to close down the cross.

Look, I like Theo and on his day he is effective. He can finish when given the chances but his game is limited – in a sense he’s similar to Lukas Podolski. He came from the same academy that created Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gareth Bale, but has stalled whereas the aforementioned players have progressed (in varying degrees). Theo Walcott is only 25 years old but on the graph of progress should be at his peak right now. He can’t help the team defend and the quality of his passing is sporadic.

And I can’t see where he fits in the current team.

The inconsistency in his performances is baffling to me. Putting all the contract issues aside, on his day he is fantastic, no doubt about it. If you look on YouTube at a compilation of his goals and you think this guy is a world class player – poise, pace and deadly finishing. If he managed to perform at his top level week in week out, he’d be on a par with Gareth Bale.

But he isn’t. While Bale’s market value is around £80 million (apparently), you could only see Walcott fetching around £25 million max.

So, the bottom line is would you sell Theo Walcott? Cast your vote below!