A study of three strikers: Arsenal, PSG and the quest to replace Giroud

It could have been a fortifying night for Olivier Giroud. At one end, Alexis Sanchez was mounting an ever more convincing argument that he is not a lone striker, while at the other Edinson Cavani was busy proving that even spending £50m on a centre-forward doesn't guarantee proficiency. And then it all went wrong

This entertaining match at the Parc des Princes, as Arsenal opened their Champions League campaign with a useful but hugely lucky 1-1 draw away at PSG, contained many lessons but most of them centred around the art of striking.

Cavani was responsible for the first instructive moment, scoring inside a minute as he showed Arsenal that if you give good players time and space in the box, they will punish you.

It was a truth he spent the next 89 minutes dismantling.

His angled header, executed following a brilliant cross from the rampaging Serge Aurier, was a classic centre-forward's goal; an act of instinct. Troublingly for the Uruguayan, he could not replicate it. Had Cavani converted even half of the brilliant chances which fell his way, he would have had a hat-trick and Arsenal would have been buried in Paris.

Four times he was clear on goal; four times he had the yips and failed to score.

The most egregious failure came on 34 minutes when he ran onto a delightful through-ball from Marco Verratti, rounded David Ospina and missed an open goal; it was hardly more forgivable when after 42 minutes he got in behind to chest down a chipped pass from Angel Di Maria and then completely messed up his attempted volley.

Cavani has frequently been put forward as a candidate to send Arsenal's long-winding search for a 'world class' centre-forward in recent years. Yet in Paris the £50m signing from Napoli has been afflicted by similar problems to Giroud, the man he could have replaced. Like the Frenchman, he has failed to convince a large portion of his own supporters of his ability and his finishing has been too inconsistent. Unlike the Frenchman he had been operating in the shadows of a superior talent, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but it seems he has dragged his insecurities with him into the lead role this season.

Unusually, but not uniquely, Giroud has had to become accustomed to the bench this season, but an experiment with Sanchez up front is yielding disappointing results for Arsene Wenger. The Chilean possesses many of the right attributes for the position - he is quick, a fine dribbler and finisher too – but he is struggling to get to grips with the intricacies of playing in a central role.

In fact, Sanchez’s best moments in Paris came when Giroud had been introduced as a substitute, pushing him back out to the wing. It was from this slightly more withdrawn position that he started playing neat forward passes into the box - not always his forte but a useful weapon on Tuesday night, most notably when he found Alex Iwobi with a lovely short pass for a chance on 83 minutes which the youngster thumped at goalkeeper Alphonse Areola.

And then, of course, there was his equalising goal. It came from a familiar position as Sanchez approached the box from the left-hand side after Iwobi's shot from Mesut Ozil's perfect cut-back had been repelled by Areola. With Giroud pushed right up into the six-yard box, Sanchez's punchy strike from just inside the penalty area wasn't clean but it propelled the bouncing ball past the reach of the keeper.

It was the introduction of Giroud which reformulated the attack and made it function properly as a unit. His arrival belatedly addressed one of Wenger's two big selection failures: the other being the decision to leave Granit Xhaka on the bench and start with Francis Coquelin, who was not up to the standard of the game. Arsenal were fortunate that Cavani's wasteful performance had stopped PSG from pulling away into the distance; it allowed them to rectify their errors and snatch a point, with the assistance of Giroud.

It was all going swimmingly for the Frenchman until injury time, when he was shown a second yellow card for a tangle off the ball with Marco Verratti, who was also dismissed. Replays were initially hard to come by but it seemed Giroud was rather harshly done by: the contact involved looked innocuous.

Still, after his red card against Dinamo Zagreb last season it is the second year in a row that Giroud has been dismissed in the opening Champions League fixture of the campaign – not a record which is particularly useful for his manager. This season the result could be a chance for new signing Lucas Perez, who was brought in for £17m in the latest attempt to replace Giroud. Wenger and Arsenal have conspicuously failed with bids for Luis Suarez, Gonzalo Higuain, Jamie Vardy and Alexandre Lacazette in recent years.

With Wenger still apparently unconvinced by him, the eternal Giroud debate will rumble on. But the first Champions League foray of the season showed that in the search for alternatives, ostensibly easy fixes – either changing the position of a player you already have, or splashing out big money on a superstar – are not always easy after all.