Going into the international break, Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud was already under a certain amount of scrutiny from Gooners over his rather poor start to the season. In four Premier League appearances, the 28-year old has found the net only once, albeit with a spectacular finish against Crystal Palace. However, fans have found themselves lamenting Giroud’s failures, especially his inability to influence the game more at Newcastle just before the break.
Calls went up from far and wide, once again, for Arsenal to sign a striker fans believe they desperately need to compete with (or simply replace) Giroud as the main target for the club. In the wake of a very quiet Deadline Day and the recent news that Danny Welbeck will miss “months” after knee surgery, the cries of anticipation and longing have been replaced with angry lamentations.
It seems that Arsenal fans aren’t the only group frustrated with Giroud’s goalscoring form as of late. During his team’s 2-1 victory against Serbia on Monday, French fans booed Giroud after a series of misses in the first half. It also probably didn’t help that his turnover in the 39th minute led to the move that produced Serbia’s only goal of the game.
But special attention has been paid to a trio of first-half misses that will likely turn up in Giroud’s dreams over the course of the next few weeks, or at least until his form returns. In the 15th minute, the Serbian keeper made a great reaction save on Giroud’s first-time shot from a left-sided cross. In the 20th minute, Antoine Griezmann sent Giroud into a one-on-one situation with the keeper, and forward dragged his shot just wide, prompting the first round of boos from the French crowd. Finally, in the 45th minute, Giroud put another significant chance wide, prompting more boos from the crowd.
Didier Deschamps mercifully replaced his beleaguered striker with Karim Benzema in the 62nd minute, and the jeers that accompanied his departure mercifully ended his night. Giroud was fairly circumspect about his treatment by the French crowd, noting:
That’s not the first and surely not the last time it happens. I have the mental strength to bounce back. Now I am going to focus on working. I am everything but worried about that. I will bounce back.
This is the exact attitude you’d want from a player out of form. It seems likely, given his history, that Giroud won’t be this inefficient over the course of the season and his form is likely to improve. I hang on to that finish against Palace as my rock, my anchor, my belief that the Frenchman will come good as the season wears on.
But make no mistake: this is possibly the worst time for Giroud’s form to dip. Arsenal fans have been clamoring for a new striker for years, and Giroud has been the target for that segment of the fans’ ire basically since his arrival at the club. I can’t really say why French fans had a go at him in a friendly that the team was winning – although it may have something to do with his career 10 goals in 41 national team appearances – but I’d like to think a little bit about the concept of booing in general.
Let’s be clear: I don’t want to get into a discussion about a fan’s right to boo. I get it. You buy the ticket, you get to express yourself in whatever manner you see fit within certain parameters, and booing certainly fits within those parameters. No problem there. But is booing productive behaviour? Is it meant to be productive behaviour?
We can sort of answer the former question, in that we have some conflicting data on the subject (from studies in college basketball). In 1979, Joel Thirer and Mark Rampey noted that anti-social home crowd behavior (they list chanting and swearing, and we might imagine booing in there) decreased home performance in that home teams committed more fouls and lost possession more often when fans acted antisocially. Meanwhile, in 1983, Donald Greer noted the opposite, that home teams performed better after sustained booing (more than 15 seconds).
However, I don’t think crowds boo as a form of negative encouragement as much as they boo just to express frustration. We all know that being a fan is not really a rational pastime. We are, after all, cheering for clothes. So, despite the esteemed work of Thirer, Rampey, and Greer, I’m not sure the answer for booing lies in its efficacy.
Instead, I think booing your own team lies in frustrations, of which there can be many. The players make too much money; professionals should never miss those opportunities; we pay too much money to watch this rubbish; the money in the game has made the players soft, etc…
These frustrations are so close to the boil at all times that simply a bad half of one game is enough to set the fans against their own players. At this point, it may be difficult to separate fans’ frustrations with the state of the game as a while and their frustrations with an individual’s performance. But I will say this: I believe Arsenal fans’ frustration with Giroud and France fans frustrations with him are distinct.
A quick glance of his scoring record for both club and country leads me to this conclusion, as well as my daily glance at Arsenal fans’ lamentations on the state of the club with Giroud as its main striker. Giroud simply hasn’t performed at the international level as well as he has for his club. His 10 in 41 for France pales in comparison to his 42 in 101 league appearances for Arsenal. France fans, it seems, have a fairly legitimate reason to boo Giroud. He simply hasn’t performed.
Arsenal fans’ frustration with Giroud, on the other hand, have far more to do with their frustrations with the club and its transfer dealings than it does with the performance of the player himself. Giroud has performed reasonably well over the course of his Arsenal career. However, since there is a perception that the club has the money to go out and get someone “better,” anger at Giroud and his failures is actually a proxy for anger at the club in general which really makes sense.
Giroud’s performance for Arsenal is not, and has not really ever been boo-worthy. His performance for France, however, kind of has. And since booing is rooted in emotional rather than rational responses to team and individual performance, it seems pretty predictable. I would expect it in France’s next game in October against Armenia if Giroud misses another chance or two. That is, if Giroud is even selected for the team by then. It might be a mercy for both player and nation if he’s not.
