Arsene Wenger has spoken before about the shortage of strikers in Europe and has again highlighted the need for more talent.

Using Germany and Spain as examples, the boss spoke to the Guardian about how most of the talented strikers are coming from South America and that some European teams are actually relying on attacking midfielders playing in an advanced role to score their goals.

“What I am convinced of is that in the academies we have to specialise the players,” Wenger said. “There is an age from five to 12 where you have the acquisition of the technical skills; at 12-14 you start to develop the speed and physical qualities; but from 14 onwards, when you start to position the players for their careers, maybe you have to work with specificity of a position again. Maybe we have to rethink completely the education and specialise earlier.”

The boss continued,  “What we produce now are good technical players because there are nice pitches out there – before you played in the park where you had to kick the ball up front and you had to fight. A boy of 12 who played against a boy of 16 had to be shrewd and push to get the ball. All those kind of things have gone.”

One of the reasons for this, Wenger believes, is having such young players unable to gain experience from the outset.

“One of the biggest problems in the education at the academies is that you get them to the age of 19 and then what can you offer them? We lose many players because they stand there with nowhere to go. At that age, when you have no plan, you die. That is why I prefer to loan them out. People say: ‘Why do you loan them out because you could need them?’ and it’s true. But you have to make a decision at some stage with their career. They have to develop.

“You have a generation of players who are lost between 18-20. When a guy of that age feels he doesn’t move forward he loses motivation. And I am a bit scared about that because in France they play in Division Three with their reserves so you get competition against adults. In England you have created the under-21 league. I am not a fan of it because it is not the same as playing in competitive games. In many under-21 games there is no buildup before the game, there is not the pressure of the competition, there is not the results you have to stand up for. How many academies do you have in England? Twenty-six. Multiply that by 20 or 30, you have about 700 or 800 players every year that you produce. Where do they go? They cannot go in the Premier League.”

Again, the shortage offers an explanation regarding our lack of transfer activity. There simply aren’t many world class strikers around who would genuinely be worth spending money on.

Anyone we did want to buy would automatically have their price bumped up due to a combination of said shortage and the fact that it swiftly became common knowledge that Arsenal were on the look out for another goalscorer.

As much as people outside of Arsenal like to criticise Olivier Giroud, he’s a good striker who is sure to be worth more than the £12m we paid for him back in 2012.