Why is everyone obsessing over Chamakh?

All season long there have been rumours that we're in for Bordeaux striker Marouane Chamakh.

The Moroccan striker is available on a free this summer, and Arsène Wenger has admitted an interest. The man himself has also said he prefers a move to Arsenal over the other big clubs he's been linked with.

I'll admit, I've never seen the guy play apart from a few highlights here and there, so maybe I'm missing something, but after a little look on his Wikipedia page, there doesn't seem to be anything worth getting excited about.

He's already 26, which surprised me. I at least thought he was a young prospect that had just burst onto the scene, but at 26 he's obviously been around for a while, and yet has never made much of an impression. Don't get me wrong, that's not necessarily a bad thing in itself, I believe Didier Drogba was about the same age when he hit his best form at Marseille. We know all too well how that turned out. Sigh.

Still, I look at his goal scoring record, and I'm still puzzled as to why everyone is talking about him. Before last season he'd never scored more than 10 goals, and his tally of 21 from 42 games last season doesn't exactly blow me away either.

Remember that the Premiership is a big step up from the French Ligue 1. We've wasted years waiting for our recruitments from across the channel to adapt to the new pace of the English game. If we're targetting a player from France I would expect him to, at least, be tearing the league apart, but 14 league goals isn't really up to that standard.

Add to that, the fact that he doesn't seem to have lived up to that tally so far this season, with only 8 goals from 25 games.

Like I said, I haven't seen him play. He might offer a lot more than just goals, but I don't think I'm alone in thinking we have a lot of players who that's true of already. How about an out-and-out striker who can offer us goals?

Sadly, the very fact that he's available for free makes him a realistic target. If Wenger can bring in a striker without spending anything, you can be sure he'll do it.

If we do bring in Chamakh, Wenger will probably argue that we don't have any room for more strikers, so we can forget far more impressive targets like David Villa or Edin Dzeko, who will no doubt head to United, Chelsea, Madrid, Barcelona, or even Man City, and the circle of life will continue.

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