In another thread, we're having a discussion about whether or not Chelsea or Arsenal have a stronger squad.
The way I see it, we have one absolutely superb striker, who pretty much carried the goalscoring burden for Arsenal this season. Beyond that, our next best goalscorer was Theo, with 8. Deeper still, the best we can come up with is Arteta & Vermaelen with 6. If you look at players who would 'normally' start on the bench, we had, give or take 8 league goals total, all season (assuming a 'typical' bench for last season contained Benayoun, Rosicky, Oxlade, Chamakh, Gibbs, Mertesacker and Fabianski). Up front, the only two players with any meaningful experience of playing as a central striker, backing up van Persie, managed 1 goal between them. Not so much of a problem, of course, when your main striker plays 38 games a season and scores 30 goals, but a mighty risky position to be in.
How does this compare to the teams around us? At Man City, 3 players scored more than 10 goals. Likewise Spurs. Utd only had two players to beat that mark (Rooney & Hernandez), with Welbeck on 9, Nani on 8, and Berbatov on 7, but from that list alone you can see they have a number of 'bench' players who have some kind of scoring touch. In fact, in Europe's top leagues (France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany), only Lionel Messi (43.9%) and Di Natale (44.2%, though Udinese only scored 54 total) scored a greater proportion of their clubs' goals top flight goals than van Persie (40.5%). In our own league, the next closest player by the same measure was Wayne Rooney, though his burden was fully over 10% less than RVPs.
In short, Arsenal are a team with a goalscoring problem. The biggest problem is not that we don't score enough goals, and though we scored significantly fewer than the teams who finished above us, compared with most teams in the above-mentioned group our tally was fairly competitive. More that, probably more so than any other big club in Europe with the exception of Udinese, we're dependent on one man to get us goals. I think this is something we're all aware of, so I won't labour the point any further.
Where are we this summer then? Well, even if we ignore the 'will he / won't he' RVP nonsense of this summer, we have an attack to more or less entirely rebuild. As much as I may argue this point with lagos, I think we all realise that Theo Walcott is a player who, to put it kindly, is hot and cold. He can be devastating, he can be utterly abysmal, and when it's a case of the latter we pretty much become a one-man-band in the goalscoring stakes, because there really isn't a single sodding soul beyond those two who looked even remotely likely to score more than a handful of goals at any point over the course of this season.
For me, we need to aim to have 4-5 players who can match, as a minimum, 8 goals a season (in the league), roughly one goal ever 5 games. That's not just players who start every single game - we need playmakers, people to win the ball, people to move the ball around midfield etc etc etc. It's a question of having multiple players on the pitch at any one time who can present a realistic threat to the opponents goal, and not allow RVP to become isolated and marked-out of games. It's also a question of having players on the bench, on a regular basis, who can be used when we need to chase a game, exert a bit of pressure, force a goal. Too often I looked at our bench last season, at the players I mentioned above, and you just knew that if we were a goal down with 15 minutes to go, there was almost NOTHING we could do about it.
So yes, it is a question of rebuilding, of finding those players who can start sharing some of that burden, even if Robin stays. Podolski, I believe, is an excellent start, but it really shouldn't be seen as 'job done' either. We need more. We need Theo to find some proper consistency, not the 'occasional consistency' he's showed up until this point. We need Chamberlain to step up a level. We need someone in the midfield who can actually threaten the goal a little. And, for my money, a player like Salomon Kalou, who can be had for a free, who, until this year scored a (reasonably) respectable 7 goals a season (on average) through 5 seasons, in this very league, would not be a terrible addition. I recognise his flaws, absolutely. I don't think he's going to be the difference between us winning the league or otherwise, nor do I think adding him would make up for not signing a Kagawa, a Hazard, or whoever else. I just think he's as solid an option as we could hope for to give a spot-start and a lot of bench play, over the next 3-4 years, and unlike those players we DO have on the bench today, I think he's good for the odd goal, here and there.
Seeing as he's been brought up, I should point out that I also massively prefer Clint Dempsey, just as I prefer Kagawa, Eriksen, Goetze and Hazard. But I don't really see this as an 'either / or' question. We could still easily sign, and find room for both players in the squad this summer. If anything, it'd be the Dempsey signing that would disappoint me more, as, though he's had an excellent season and I rate him as a player, I think his arrival is far, far more likely to preclude this signing of a Kagawa or Goetze-type, and when compared with the four players I've listed above I certainly think the American would be the poorest option.
Rather, I'd see the Kalou signing as a re-tooling of our squad depth, a player who, though flawed, has a reasonable technical base to work from, probably more ability than he showed at his previous club, and at least some end-product in our league to show for his past.
