Last season, Arsenal were far from ready for our first League game which we duly lost to Liverpool with a makeshift defensive set up, but this time around Wenger is much more confident that he will have a strong squad ready when we take on Leicester. “I am sure that we will have done the needed work.” Le Prof said on Arsenal.com. “Last year we went into the season with some players having a deficit in minutes played because there were only two or three players with the number of games after the European Championship. I think we have more players ready going into the competition. We have tougher games as well, we should be ready yes.”
Although we won the Emirates Cup, we still lost the second game against Sevilla, but Wenger was asked if he thought that his team were not quite ready. “No not really, because today I played the team who came in a bit later. They have less preparation and we work very hard and it was a bit, you cannot say it was not planned, but it was explainable.”
One positive was that Lacazette got another goal, despite not looking to be at his best. Wenger was happy with his new signing’s game. “When he was involved, he was intelligent, he protected the ball well and he got his goal and I think it was an encouraging performance. He suffered a bit from the fact that we were a bit flat and that we were not dominating enough to get their service, but I think for him he was one of the few who had a positive game today.”
And does Wenger think that the Frenchman may need some time to settle into the Premier League? “I don’t know, it’s very difficult, because sometimes it takes a few months, sometimes very little time. The only thing I must say with Lacazette, week after week he looks to adapt quickly but overall I think it will take him one or two months.”
We hope he doesn’t take that long, but he has ample backup with Welbeck, Giroud, Alexis (and maybe Lucas Perez? But I doubt it!). We know danny and Oli are fit after being heavily involved in pre-season, so we should have enough firepower to carry Lacazette until he is comfortable enough to shine….
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