Alexandre Lacazette Was Never a Bum by AI
Alexandre Lacazette is always swimming upstream. In the summer of 2017, Arsene Wenger decided to bring him from Lyon to Arsenal for a big sum. He scored 8 goals in the Premier League by January and Arsene Wenger decided to bring in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who went on to score 13 goals in four months.
Lacazette has many critics. He never seems able to grab a game by the scruff of the neck like Aubameyang. His stamina is not too great. He drops into the midfield and is not better than Olivier Giroud at building play. At most, he scores 15 goals in a Premier League season. His off-the-ball movement can be suspect and always tries to duel defenders. He is light-years from a player like Harry Kane who can play his role coming deeper and is wonderful at it. Add the fact that the Frenchman has no outstanding athletic abilities and you’ll see why he can be such a soft target for critics.
But Alexandre Lacazette is not a bum. For what it is worth, he is a great shooter/finisher. He often works his socks off and when your team has midfielders who can come up to combine with him, his work in the midfield can look very good. At the very least, he tries, and is a team player. The potential for improvement with a good coach is always there. He might never be one of the top scorers due to how he plays but if you’ve got goals elsewhere in your team it won’t be a problem. He can comfortably lead the line for a midtable team and would be highly rated if he were not at a club with Champions League aspirations.
Arsenal should still try to move him on in the summer but Lacazette’s legacy will not be that of a bum because he never was. He is just a player right on the cusp of making the leap to being great but doesn’t. You might call his career at Arsenal very average but that’s more an indictment of the team around him than his own qualities.
Agboola Israel