Arsenal: Lucas Perez Is The Spanish Danny Welbeck

Arsenal’s new signing Lucas Perez has been compared to Jamie Vardy, but he seems to be more like the Spanish Danny Welbeck.

The comparisons were always going to start raining in when Arsenal signed Lucas Perez. He’s fast, hard-working, tenacious and pretty innovative on the ball as well. He creates chances for his team mates and plays a very unselfish game.

Most people took his pace and said he was just like Jamie Vardy. He can get in behind the defense and outrun any defensive line.

Fair play to that comparison, but that and his work rate is all he shares with the party-hardy Vardy. Vardy is not overly unselfish or particularly creative like Perez. A big contributor to that falls on Vardy being a forward his whole life. His task has always been to score, not create. While he does create a decent amount of chances, that comes as a byproduct of the quick counter attacking play.

Lucas played out wide throughout his early career and as such, he has that learned creative gene. I still marvel over how he created two chances a game last year (at striker) and the majority of his assists (eight in total) came from him being wholly unselfish and taking a good chance and turning it into an unmissable chance for a team mate.

That is what Wenger looks to stock Arsenal with and that trait is what makes me draw a difference comparison to a different Englishman – Danny Welbeck.

Welbeck and Lucas share that insatiable work rate, they both have a decent physical presence and they both have that history of being equal parts winger and striker. They are also both turning their attention to being strikers now.

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The comparison now takes a bit of a speculative turn. Welbeck has always been a top prospect, so he hasn’t ever been on a team that wasn’t top tier. As such, we haven’t really seen what he can do with a season as a striker, but we can draw from his English escapades that if you were to put Welbeck on a decent, but not top team, he would have a 17 goal, eight assist season. He’s too much of a presence not to put significant pressure on goal.

Lucas will be tested at Arsenal, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar production to that of Welbeck, depending on how much time he can manage. Welbeck has only played 2600 minutes in all competitions since coming to Arsenal, so while his eleven goals and five assists may seem minuscule, most of that has come out wide and he still contributes to a goal every 162 minutes. Not terrible when game time is so few and far between.

(Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images) /

Welbeck created 1.2 chances per game in his first season with Arsenal, he has been known to pass up those good chances to create perfect chances and, while it has backfired at times, it’s a positive, selfless quality that he shares with Lucas. It will also probably have to be a learning process for Lucas (and still Welbeck) to occasionally take those ‘good’ chances rather than wait for perfect chances because Arsenal has that nasty habit (and Welbeck too) of trying to pass the ball into the net.

Not to take this in a negative direction, but, while both have incredibly positive qualities and abilities, they are also known to miss a few chances between goals.

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The similarities have piled up. The final similarity that we have to hope and pray doesn’t come to fruition is where Lucas can’t latch on at striker and is forced out wide. Let’s hope that doesn’t add to the similarities.

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