Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette will still win us the Europa League

Arsenal were banking on Alexandre Lacazette to carry them in the Europa League, but that plan is still largely in place, despite the knee surgery.

Arsenal sold Olivier Giroud in January and made their intentions as clear as they could possibly be. They wanted to devote themselves to two similar strikers, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang likely to carry the weight in the Premier League and, for the time being, Alexandre Lacazette to take the Europa League.

Both directives are equally important, as they both can result in Champions League, so it’s hard to even see Lacazette’s position as a demotion, because he still had a massive job to do in the grand scheme.

And then the injury happened. Out of nowhere, Lacazette had to have surgery on his knee which wrecked him for the round of 32, leaving the Gunners in the questionable care of Danny Welbeck.

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It’s a problem, no doubt, because Lacazette is set to miss 4-6 weeks from the time of his surgery, which, according to when the news broke, was within the past week, with no exact time set.

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Arsene Wenger said it would be four to five weeks on the 13th of this month, and if we are taking that time frame, he could be back as early as mid-March, but more realistically, it would seem that late-March, early April is the more likely target.

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The negative to this that he will certainly miss the round of 16, barring something extraordinary. The extent of this news won’t be fully known until we draw our opponent for the round. This opponent could be Napoli, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig or a handful of other options, but thanks to a favorable Round of 32 draw, either Napoli or Leipzig will be gone and Dortmund are far from in the clear.

There will be plenty of ‘fodder’ teams to draw from that shouldn’t need more than an improving Welbeck to take care of.

The quarter-finals don’t start until April 8th, at which point Lacazette will surely be back and ready to go. He should be starting again and that is all we need. Something about the situation that Lacazette was in when he got hurt leads me to believe that he will be back guns blazing.

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Especially seeing as how Wenger did the ultimate move and blamed Lacazette’s problems on his knee problem, giving the French striker a fresh slate to get back into form.