Yaya Sanogo - Will 'The Postman' Deliver?
Just like our simian cousins, we do enjoy a spot of shit-flinging. The fecal matter was flying thick and fast on Saturday afternoon, our performance against the men-beasts of the Potteries acting as a suppository, easing the defecation out and spreading it hither and thither on our favoured social network. In the past, if the worst happens, which in the last few seasons was rather too regularly, I would declare #TwitterOff, unable to face the carnage of Gooners attacking their kin for simply keeping faith with an out of form player, or for criticizing someone who had a mare.
It would seem that this is catching on as I saw a few declare that they would simply spend their weekend moping around the house being a buzzkill for the rest of their family rather than pour their heart out on Twitter. In the aftermath of defeat Twitter is as appealing as a ballscratch from Edward Scissorhands.
The brave soldier that I am, I braved the keyboard napalm and tweeted a few observations from the match, a reading from the black box of the wreckage if you will. One of them is that whenever we suffer defeat, no matter the circumstance, we always have a scapegoat. A sacrificial lamb that gets led meekly to the alter to have not only its gullet slit but it's innards strewn, while fans bathe in the blood. Fuck I've seen way too many schlocky horror flicks. The offering to the fans this weekend was a two-for-one offer, the familiar faces of Lukas Podolski and legendary lothario Olivier Giroud.
The aforementioned gentlemen have previously been led up to the open face of the volcano on many occasions, Poldi less so as his affable nature and seemingly vital lubricant to the spirit of the team renders him sometimes invincible to criticism. Not so in the weekend. It seems clear that our zany friend Lukas seems more potent when exploding from the bench as I'm pretty sure his record when starting games is not exactly world-beating. Olivier seems to be the flavour of the month at the moment when it comes to excuses. It can't be that we just played pretty pants. Oh no, it's because Giroud missed a chance. I don't know how many people watched the game, but Olivier didn't really have much bearing on the game. A gun is pretty useless without ammo and we struggled to break down a well drilled but ultimately savage Stoke team. I just swallowed a bit of sick as that was as near to a compliment that I will give those fucking heathens. 
There are two camps when it comes to Giroud. One is ever shrinking. I believe he is good enough. He has 16 goals this season. I'm not going to say he is unblemished. He doesn't run nearly enough and his finishing, the main trait needed to be a striker some would say, is sometimes wayward. For people to say that he doesn't have enough talent to lead the line, I would refer you to his backheel goal vs Southampton. If it was The King who had scored it, which he did on a few occasions, or even Santi, we would've waxed lyrical about it, seen Vines backed with dubstep plastered all over our timelines, pictures splashed everywhere. It was instinctive, it was talented and reflexive. It was a brilliant goal. He is capable of so much more, but is suffering with inconsistency. I saw people shouting for Benteke after his two goal salvo vs Norwich. Benteke who has been absolutely dire for the majority of the season. When you compare Giroud to Aguero, Suarez and other players of that ilk then he does come up a tad short, but not by as much as some people say. I will say this though. He does need back-up. He needs competition.
Do we have this on our ranks currently? After January, I was of the negative persuasion. Theo, probably our biggest threat, out for the season, albeit on a massive high.
Nik B proving that Juve were probably right to give him short shrift, even if he did put in a shift whenever we required him and Podolski as mentioned previously proving that a hammerfoot is not the only weapon that a forward needs. Step forward Yaya Sanogo.
When Yaya signed in the summer, it was the window of our discontent. We had once more scraped CL Qualification, the 4th place trophy living a lonely life in our trophy cabinet alongside it's only friend.
We were looking for reinforcements to once more get the gunpowder firing. We needed more quality and apparently we could afford it now as the sounds coming from Gazidis were stating that the financial shackles were off, we were no longer being kept in a dungeon, manacled to a wooden structure with a gimp ball in our mouth, attempting to force out the safety word " STADIUM PAID " as the dominatrix shoves another rigid piece of vegetation up our poopchute........ahem.....apologies, shall we move on?
We know what eventually happened, but Sanogo crept in amongst the cacophony of negativity and injured himself. Comparisons to our crash test dummy Diaby were inevitable, especially when Sanogo was a postage stamp width away from shunning the life of a footballer to become a Postman due to recurring injuries. Wow Arsene, I know you love potential, but if you needed to replace Alan the parcel boy then surely we could've done it differently?
Thankfully amongst my follower count there are numerous people who follow all stages of the game, I was made aware of his performances for his country in the U-20 World Cup, where for the first time Les Blues were victorious and our new signing, our dud, was top scorer. It doesn't mean that he was the new Henry or the New Anyone, it just meant that Arsene had once more proven that, when it comes to spotting prodigious, well-hidden talent, there was no-one who could match him.
We've waited quite some time to see Yaya put in a proper display, mostly because he's been too busy sinking battleships on the treatment table with Abou. I bet Sanogo never thought he would be thankful for Olivier Girouds' inquisitive phallus for his breakthrough. Neither did anyone really, apart form PaddyPower offering odds of 5000000/1. It was our big-nosed strikers philandering ( and maybe his loss of form/motiviation ? ) that led Yaya to start was the start of our run of games that would define our season. It was the game Vs the Scousers. In the Cup. After recently being humbled 5-1 by the hubcap-thieves. This game was massive. When the team-sheet was announced, most people were wondering why Giroud had been left out, leaving Sanogo to go about his business. At the end of the match, and a priceless victory, I don't think I saw any tweet or opinion that wasn't impressed by Yaya. There was more to come however.
Midweek came the Bayern game. I'm not going to dissect the game, let's just say that if Wojicech hadn't been sent off and we managed to keep the pace of our play as it was for the first 25mins, the result would've been entirely different. Let's look at Yayas involvement in the game. He troubled the GK with a couple of efforts, terrorized Alaba, Dante and co for a good portion of the game and never looked out of place. quite the opposite in fact, he looked assured and fleet-footed, which surprised me given how gangly he looks, like Bambi on rollerskates. If we take a step back from the performance, we find a 20yr old CL debutant who had never faced a team of this caliber before pull of a display that earned rave reviews. The kid has certainly got minerals.
The crux of the matter is this: Can Yaya Sanogo prove to be the able deputy that Olivier so desperately needs? Can he be the roaring fire up Girouds arse that wakes him up when he rests on his laurels? Much depends on his fitness. Arsene obviously trusts him immensely to put him in such high-profile games, ahead of much experienced competition. The Clown Prince of Denmarks days are numbered surely, but Yaya I think could be something special. Marc Overmars wasn't touched by other clubs before moving to us as his knee was shot to bits. Wenger took a gamble. It seems that Wenger has once more put chips on the table. I think he will come up trumps again. I just hope he stops playing board games with Diaby, Abou is NOT good for your health. Just kidding Abou, we still love you.
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