Nasri is a bit spiteful, but not a waster. He copped quite a lot of flack for his humdrum partnership with Sagna. The version of Nasri we had would probably have combined well with the version of Bellerin we have now—in fact I'd like to see Wilshere get that chance.
What Chamakh did as a target man and link player set the stage for what Giroud does now about ten times as well. Bendtner wasn't completely useless but if he wasn't jogging onto the ball in acres of space thirty yards from goal, or leaping for a header, he probably wasn't going to have any impact.