Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has asked his midfielders to increase their goal scoring rate after Thierry Henry suggested that the Gunners need to buy Karim Benzema if they want to win Premier League again. Wenger was quick to hit back at Henry’s suggestion as he insisted that he has enough goal scorers in his squad and there is not need to sign a centre forward this summer.
“I respect Thierry Henry’s football knowledge, but it is not as simple that you just sign a striker like Benzema and then mathematically you win the title. It doesn’t work like that,” Wenger said.
“It is important to have a top striker, but I think Giroud will not be far from 20 goals. If he played the whole season he would have scored 20 and [Theo] Walcott as well.
“I am not concerned about the goals in our team. We look like we can score goals when we go forward and I think we have to depend less on one guy who can score. We need to develop the collective aspect.
“A guy like [Alex] Oxlade-Chamberlain should have an ambition to score 10 goals. [Alexis] Sanchez can score more goals. I think [Mesut] Ozil has to fix himself a target of at least ten goals every year playing behind the striker.
“We can share the goals around, more so than when Thierry played. Then you knew before the game he would get you a goal, but the dynamic of this team is different and we have many attacking options in this team.”
Wenger also had his view on Centre forwards as he feels they are not many quality strikers produced in the recent years and the change in facilities of the game have changed football to a different level.
“Maybe we have to create specific schools for centre-forwards,” Wenger suggested. “In Europe we produce now plenty of good technical midfielders.
“When I arrived in England, in every single club there was a guy who before the game you’d say, be careful he’s good in the air. Be careful because he’s aggressive. Every club had one of them.
“Now we are developing less centre-backs and centre-forwards in Europe because before, the team’s practiced in the park in bad pitches in winter. You had to lift the ball, had to go behind, and today the pitches are all perfect and in training, with only passing, we develop only midfielders now.
“All the education is about passing on the ground on perfect pitches, and before when you watched training sessions, you had to kick the ball from the back to the front and to go behind and to fight with the centre-back to win the ball and have a chance to retain it.
“That is not the case any more and somewhere, the fact the whole conditions have changed, we have not adapted in our education, we just develop players who are good passers of the ball but not any more tough defenders and not any more players who are used to go into the fight.”
However after losing 2-0 to West ham in their opening fixture, the French manager needs to rethink.