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Arsenal’s signing of Lucas Perez was met with hesitant applause, but it’s only getting weirder after the Gunners latest goodwill offering
Arsenal may be turning Lucas Perez into Lukas Podolski 2.0. And I mean the Lucas Podolski at the end of his time in North London. Our new Spanish striker has not had the time he expected to have since coming over to England and now things are getting a bit odd.
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It’s not the strangest thing in the world for players to recover away from their new team. It’s happened before. That being said, Lucas Perez being sent back to Deportivo La Coruna does feel strange. That’s because of all the drama between Lucas and Arsenal in his short time in England.
It wasn’t that long ago that Lucas was saying that he thought he would have a bigger role in the Gunner’s squad. It made me think that Wenger may have offered up some promises that he either never planned to deliver on or simply couldn’t deliver on.
Whatever the case, Lucas has not had much of a chance to make a statement for himself in a Gunner’s shirt. He has done well against push-over sides like Ludogorets and Nottingham Forest, but he hasn’t been used in much of anything else.
Now that he is injured, he is so far out of Wenger’s spectrum that I often have to remind myself that he’s even still on the team.
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It’s pretty clear that Lucas was a last-gasp buy. Wenger may have been interested in him, but I don’t think he was a top priority. Antoine Griezmann and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were. Lucas was a stop-gap for a team that desperately needed striker numbers.
And, looking back, I wonder if Wenger would do things differently. Giroud and Alexis seem to be striker enough for Arsenal, at least until a viable candidate can establish himself.
Sending Lucas back to Spain feels like Wenger is saying “you aren’t fitting in well here. Go on back home for a bit and try to cheer up.” At least, that’s the way I see it. Arsenal has some of the top facilities in the world of football, so it’s not like Deportivo is the more capable side.
Lucas may be spending weeks, even a month or more in Spain with his former team as opposed to spending that time with the Gunners.
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Perhaps a loan move would have been the smarter option?