Arsenal: Lucas Perez treatment doesn’t help anyone

Lucas Perez is enraged at Arsenal and given the way he was treated at the club during his first season, who can blame the Spaniard? But will that affect the future, will it change things for Arsenal or will things change at the club?

No one envies the manager’s job and what he/she have to do for the team. Even at Arsenal. They need to make sure certain goals are met, they take the risks if a big signing flops and in the end, it’s their heads on the chopping block if the club starts doing badly. However, throughout all this, they also somehow have to keep their players happy but having a large and competitive squad all fighting for a World Cup place, makes things harder.

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Everyone wants to be the first name on the team sheet; they all want to do what they love and not just sit on the sidelines watching everybody else. That was never the case for Lucas Perez, as he was barely awarded a chance to show his potential, with him making just 21 appearances for the club including only nine starts.

Having arrived for a fee of nearly £20m (which made him on his arrival the fifth most expensive signing in Arsenal history), one would expect more than 21 games throughout the season.

Critics claimed that Lucas Perez was nothing more than a panic buy, with Oliver Giroud out for three months and Danny Welbeck injured until January. And with promises being made and Arsene Wenger insisting that Perez wasn’t a panic buy, the 27-year-old walked on to the Emirates and found himself marginalized.

It’s not as if the striker played badly. Far from it in-fact, as despite playing just 21 games during the entirety of the season, Perez still contributed with 7 goals and 5 assists. This includes a sensational volley against Bournemouth and a Champions League hat-trick against FC Basel, after which Perez was subjected to less than two minutes in the next few matches.

Nothing he did helped his case and things just became frustrating. And then things went from bad to worse, with the arrival of Alexandre Lacazette, Perez not only loses out on playing opportunities but also on his No. 9 and the 28-year-old said that he had no clue that he would lose the shirt, until he saw the news on the Arsenal website.

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In an interview with La Voz de Galicia, Perez said “I want to leave to play and be happy. Last year I barely had any opportunities and when I had them I took advantage of them. And this season is clearly going to be more of the same. I want to fight to go to the national team. I want to play soccer. But for that, I have to leave.”

But the question remains, will this affect any future transfers? Because no player wants to come to a club where they’re treated badly, even though Arsene Wenger did admit towards the end of the season that he “felt sorry” for the Spaniard, with opportunities far and few as both Welbeck and Giroud returned.

Will things change or will Arsenal lose more players all because of a lack of first team opportunities, like Serge Gnabry and Lucas Perez? With questions about Calum Chambers future and even Alex-Oxlade Chamberlain to a certain extent, things certainly need to change around the Emirates.

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It’s frustrating and irritating, to say the least, but it does nothing good for Arsenal, or anyone, for that matter and in the end, Lucas Perez will become the one who got away, like so many others.