Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette the complement, not the cornerstone

In a nice piece for the Metro, James Goldman claims that Arsenal should build the attack around Alexandre Lacazette. However, he is the perfect complement, not cornerstone, to the offence.

The signing of Alexandre Lacazette is a significant one, when he plays, that is. Ever since the departure of Robin van Persie in the summer of 2012, Arsenal have lacked that prolific, clinical centre-forward that every title-winning team boasts. Well, now they have one.

Lacazette, as is his scintillating record for Lyon with over 100 goals for the club proves, is an outstanding goalscorer. Smart and calm when in front of goal, composed and compact technique, a knack for making the net ripple and the crowd raw. He is a natural-born goalscorer. But that does not mean that the attack should be built around his considerable talents, as James Goldman in the Metro suggested.

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Goldman points to the early success that Lacazette has had — six goals in his first 12 games is the best start to an Arsenal career since Davor Suker in 1999, beating out van Persie, Olivier Giroud and Thierry Henry — as a reason to faze out the soon-to-be-departing Alexis Sanchez and begin founding the attack on the talents on Lacazette.

And, to a certain extent, he makes a fair and valid point: Sanchez will leave; Lacazette is now the future of this attack; Arsene Wenger needs to build towards the future, not rest on the precariousness of the present. But there is one key aspect that Goldman has missed: The type of player that Lacazette is. I should state, at this point, that it is an excellent piece that is well worth your time, so do go and check it out.

Let me give you an example. Some of Manchester United’s greatest goalscorers in the Premier League era are Ruud van Nistelrooy, Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke and Ole Gunnar Soljskaer — others may suggest the likes of Eric Cantona or Cristiano Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney, but they are not pure goalscorers.

But they were never the focal point of the attack. Although they scored the goals, the attack was built around another player or players: Cantona in the ’90s, Ryan Giggs after him, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney after him. And all of those examples rotated in and out of the side without much change in productivity. As long as there was attacking creativity and impetus around them, they were, to some extent, interchangeable.

Now, that is not to say that van Nistelrooy et al. are bad players. They are some of the greatest strikers to have ever pulled on a United shirt. They are tremendous players. But they were not the cornerstone of the attack; they were the complement.

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That is the role that Lacazette takes. He should not be the foundation of the attack. He is no Thierry Henry. He is more like an Ian Wright. Arsenal need to implement a system and a personnel that allow Lacazette to shine. Not the other way round.

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