Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette frustration clouding the point

Arsenal are being very tight-fisted with their usage of Alexandre Lacazette, and it led to a particularly frustrating outing against Newcastle United.

Arsene Wenger has taken a very regimented approach to Alexandre Lacazette. The plan has been clear – in order to protect him from the Premier League, he will be subbed off in every single Arsenal match between the 60th and 80th minute, barring Manchester United.

Each successive time this has happened, the record Frenchman has looked more and more frustrated at not being able to finish the match. In games where he hasn’t scored, but has been effective and looked like scoring, he has been taken off. In games where he has scored and looked for another, he is taken off.

Each and every time, he is taken off. No exception. There is no real logic behind it. He isn’t tired and he’s our biggest threat to the opponents goal.

I think back to West Ham. He was taken off with the match 0-0 despite looking pretty positive and being our biggest threat to goal.

Against Newcastle, he was taken off again in the 71st minute. This time, however, it was his poorest match since arriving. His finishing was off, as on two occasions in particular he absolutely fluffed his lines, which is what he is here specifically not to do.

As he was coming off, he again looked flustered and threw his loves right in front of Wenger.

The problem in this situation is that any sort of point that was meant to be made by subbing him for being ineffective was lost because he is always subbed off right about that same time every single match.

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Being subbed doesn’t really mean anything to him, as it would to say Mesut Ozil or Alexis Sanchez if they were taken off around the 60, 70 minute mark. To Lacazette, it is an unnecessary part of every match life.

I didn’t consider it to be a budding problem until I realized that there is clearly no intention of changing things up. This looks to be the plan until kingdom come or until Wenger wises up and accepts that it might not be in his best interests.

Frustrating our record signing is never a good thing, but to do it day by day is obviously a bit worse. I do worry about the long-term consequences of this. Players do not have a lot of patience with clubs these days, or with anything, and if he continues to go off in disbelief at the same time every match, there are going to be issues with his confidence, with his drive, with his everything.

Next: 5 Things Learned Against Newcastle

Plus he’d be squarely in the golden boot race if he was given the chance at garbage time opportunities like Romelu Lukaku has.

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