THE VITALS:

Team: Arsenal

Brand: Puma

Era: 2017-18 (Used for the 2017-18 Premier League season, the 2017 FA Community Shield Match and the 2018 EFL Cup FInal)

Name/Number: Giroud #12

CONDITION: EXCELLENT

This shirt comes to you in excellent condition! This shirt shows close to zero sign of wear, meanwhile all of the respective applications are in excellent stead too.

DIMENSIONS:

Size: 15-16 Years

Pit to Pit Measurement: 20 inches

Shirt Length: 27.25 inches 

Made by Puma in 2017; the dimensions of this shirt in-fact lend themselves to a great size small adult fitting shirt, so I wouldn’t have any reservations about buying this if you normally wear a size small!

DESCRIPTION:

In what was the fourth season of collaboration between Arsenal and Puma; the German manufacturer would create yet another entirely new and unique design for ‘The Gunners’ home shirt in 2017-18! Using a duskier shade of red that borders dark maroon, Puma would choose grey as the shirts tertiary colour in what was another first that they introduced. Another caveat of this shirt was the use of a classic collar, another first for an Arsenal home-shirt since the 2005-06 season! Above even the runs to the UEFA Europa League semi-final or the 2018 Carabao Cup Final; this shirt will always be associated with the final season of Arsene Wenger’s legendary tenure, which he drew to a close at the end of the 2017-18 season after 22 seasons! This would also be the last Arsenal shirt to be worn by the likes of: Alexis Sanchez, Theo Walcott, Olivier Giroud, Francis Coquelin and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain!

THE SEASON:

The 2016-17 season was a mixed bag for Arsenal; the glory of winning the FA Cup was offset by a plus 20 year season low of finishing 5^th and for the first time since the 1997-98 season, missing out on Champions League football. Against all odds, the club were able to retain the services of Alexis Sanchez when a move to Manchester City looked all but nailed on to happen on the final day of the Transfer Window, and he would have new team-mates in the form of: Sead Kolašinac and Alexandre Lacazette to link up with ahead of the new season!

Their clash with Leicester City on 11/08/17 was the 2017-18 Premier League season curtain raiser, and it was a bona-fide classic as they defeated the 2015-16 champions 4-3 at The Emirates! That optimism quickly diminished however, as defeats to Stoke City and the Liverpool elicited sighs of the plague’s that have hamstrung the team over the previous decade. Their season would be a tale of 2/3 match winning runs, followed by defeat or draw, and between 02/12/17 to 04/03/18, they would win just 4 games from 15 as the top 4 was now 13 points away! Arsenal would rally in the final quarter of the league season as they won 6 of their remaining 9 games of the season to finish in 6^th place.

In the domestic cup competitions; Arsenal would stun Chelsea in the Community Shield clash for the 2^nd time in 3 seasons; defeating their 2017 FA Cup Final opponents in a 4-1 penalty shootout triumph! They would remain a persistent thorn in the side of ‘The Blues’ all season as not only would they remain unbeaten against them in the league, but would eliminate them in the semi-final of the EFL Cup before being beaten by Manchester City in the Final on February 25^th!

In their first voyage in the Europa League, Arsenal would reach the semi-final where they were only denied by eventual winners – Atletico Madrid in a tense semi-final. The May 3^rd defeat to the Spanish side holds the footnote of being Arsene Wenger’s last ever European game he has managed in.

The season also holds the distinction of an incredible winter transfer window series of dealings that saw Alexis Sanchez join Manchester United with Henrikh Mkhitaryan moving to Arsenal. He would be joined his former partner in crime at Borussia Dortmund – Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who joined for a club record fee of £56 million and instantly began repaying the fee by supplying 10 goals inside of just 13 appearances!

The notable players that season were:

Alexis Sanchez, Alex Iwobi, Danny Welbeck, Lucas Perez, Olivier Giroud, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Theo Walcott, Mesut Ozil, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Santi Cazorla, Aaron Ramsey, Granit Xhaka, Mohamed Elneny, Francis Coquelin, Gabriel, Nacho Monreal, Per Mertesacker, Laurent Koscielny, Shkodran Mustafi, Rob Holding, Callum Chambers, Mathieu Debuchy, Sead Kolašinac, Hector Bellerin, Petr Cech, David Ospina