Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette a product of Arsene Wenger’s past

Arsenal continue to put the clamp on Alexandre Lacazette, but is this just a byproduct of Arsene Wenger over-analyzing his past struggles?

Arsenal don’t often spend a lot of money. So when they do, it’s time to pay attention. They have never spend more money than what they spent on Alexandre Lacazette. Naturally, we are therefore expecting the world of him, yet even though he hasn’t necessarily given us “the world” it’s safe to say we should all be satisfied.

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Arsene Wenger should be satisfied all the more. It couldn’t have been easy for him to drop all that money on one guy when he often swears to abhor such behavior. But it’s hard to say it wasn’t worth it.

This raises that eternal question, however, of just why the hell he can’t play for more minutes than he’s getting. Thus far into the season, he has been subbed off in every single match bar Manchester United. Despite having twice as many goals as the next best Gunner.

No matter his form, the state of the game, his goal tally, his anything, if the hour mark passes, it’s time to anticipate his departure.

Wenger has made it clear in the past that he is trying to protect him, but for that, we have to ask, well, why didn’t he try to protect Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil, Granit Xhaka or Shkodran Mustafi when they all first arrived?

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These are big name guys that had big boy price tags and there was no hiding from the impact they were supposed to have. They played (and mostly still do play) every single minute of every single game.

Actually, that’s where I draw my hypothesis from. In each of those situations, throwing them directly into the fire has had immediate repercussions. Ozil was not up to par when he started and has since struggled to maintain his form. Alexis was too important, per say, and now wants to leave. Granit Xhaka has struggled to settle in. Mustafi has had the best run, but even he has been too rash at times.

This baptism by fire of big time signings has not panned out all that well for him. I’m wondering if maybe he’s seen that and thought, “right, I’m going to harness his ego unlike I did Alexis. I’m going to protect his confidence unlike I did Ozil. I’m going to protect the team, unlike I did Xhaka.”

It’s a hyper-analytical way of looking at this, but Wenger is known as Le Prof for a reason. He thinks things through to a fault, even over-thinking at times.

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It’s an ongoing game of perfecting how to handle new transfers. For whatever reason, Lacazette is being harnessed, and there has to be a reason as to why. This is just another theory to explain it.