Arsenal: Lucas Perez Treatment Shows Weakening Of Wenger’s Resolve

Arsenal used to be built on slick and savvy signings, but given how Wenger has treated Lucas Perez, that clever resolve may well be weakening.

There was a time in recent Arsenal memory where we were all sick of Wenger trying to be cute with his signings. Granted, there wasn’t a lot of money to go around and Le Prof had to be slick in order to make ends meet, it still became commonplace.

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There were no big name signings, only under-the-radar signings that we hoped to God would pan out.

That was how Wenger got his start. Before the Premier League became the international capital of club football, Wenger had a damn near monopoly on the international market. His slick signings built the Invincible side and brought the greatest period of success in Arsenal history.

But, as is the case with success, people learn. And Wenger lost that edge. And it all came at a pretty poor time, too, as he lost that pole position in the international market right as the debt for the Emirates began.

So we started making due with signings like Mikel Arteta, Nicklas Bendtner and Olivier Giroud. While Giroud panned out, not many others did and, as mentioned, we were all crying out for an end to the cutesy signings and a return to signing proven products.

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That has been the name of the transfer game lately, as Wenger has shirked the Yaya Sanogo’s and instead gone after the Alexis Sanchez’s.

But Lucas Perez fits in the former camp. He is an attempted slick and savvy pick-up. The kind of pick up that Wenger would normally have overused rather than underuse. It made him look good, after all, to prove that he could still discover talents that not too many others were keyed in on.

So to see Lucas so carefully used, I wonder if Wenger isn’t losing his confidence in his clever signings. I mean, this is a guy who shoved Yaya Sanogo to the front of our line up with far too much confidence and watched him crumble.

Now we can’t even get a start for a guy that did more in five minutes than Sanogo did with his entire Gunner’s career (which, by the way, is ending at long last).

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At the very least, this may be even further proof that Wenger does indeed learn new tricks. Even if those tricks can be counterproductive at times.