Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette squeaks out win in Alvaro Morata duel

Everyone wanted to see who would win the striker duel between Arsenal’s Alexandre Lacazette and Chelsea’s Alvaro Morata. They both lost.

I was up in arms prior to Arsenal’s match against Chelsea because of the lack of respect being shown to Alexandre Lacazette compared to the tremendous overabundance of respect being shown to Alvaro Morata.

In summary, I don’t see why the Spaniard is viewed so much higher just because he has one more goal. His resume pales next to Lacazette’s.

This match against Chelsea was supposed to be a big battle in the ongoing war of who got the better striker, but what ended up happening was a fizzling squabble rather than a battle. While both strikers are immensely talented, neither of them was able to do much of anything against their respective foes.

For Alvaro Morata, he managed just two shots, neither of which were on target. He created zero chances and only had a pass completion of 55%. His primary foe was Shkodran Mustafi who, to his massive credit, pocketed the Spaniard, just like he did Diego Costa in his first clash with Chelsea.

Morata looked absolutely neutralized against an impenetrable defense taking four poor touches and being dispossessed twice as well. That’s six possession losses and zero shots on target.

Lacazette had his struggles too. He also managed two shots, but did manage to get one on target. He completed just 53% of his passes, but was also only responsible for half the possession losses as Morata had.

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Neither of these duelists deserves to be crowned the “victor” but in the event that one must be identified, I don’t think there is any question that the win goes to Lacazette. The big, huge issue that the Frenchman had wasn’t with the Chelsea defense, it was with himself. He was his own worst enemy.

His skied effort after Aaron Ramsey‘s “walk on water” move was sickeningly off target and he couldn’t seem to keep up with the pace of the game.

But Morata was worse. He was completely useless thanks to an opposing defender. Lacazette still had threats, some of them rather large. I can’t remember once thinking that Morata was going to hurt us.

It may be a small victory in the long run, but for everyone out there that was tuning into who did better, rest assured, it was Lacazette. And it’s for the same reason that I thought it would be – because Lacazette can create for himself while Morata really can’t.

Next: 5 Things Learned Against Chelsea

Both of these strikers are going to be in the next top tier of Premier League strikers. The only reason I’m even pointing out that Lacazette was better in this insignificant duel is that I want everyone who is anointing Morata as superior to Lacazette to remember who was better today. Even if, in being better, he was also poor.

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