Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette goal drought the least of his worries

Arsenal watched on as Alexandre Lacazette was again left with a hung head and deflated spirits. Forget the goals, there are bigger problem here.

We don’t know what was promised to Alexandre Lacazette for him to come to Arsenal. What we do know is that he wanted Champions League football and he gave that desire up to come play at the Emirates.

It must have been something Arsene Wenger said, then. Wenger says a lot of things, not a lot of which are proven to be true, most times. But I would wager that part of what he offered was that Lacazette would be playing alongside Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil – two world-class players that, when played with Lacazette this year, has turned this attack into an unstoppable force.

Nowadays, Lacazette is being forced to suffer through Alex Iwobi and Danny Welbeck. In the past two matches, with Iwobi and Welbeck “supporting” our new “world class” striker, they have combined for three chances created (zero from Welbeck). That’s in 345 combined minutes.

Three chances.

The effect is plain to see. Lacazette isn’t just not scoring, he looks completely miserable. This is not the attack he was supposed to be leading. This is not the team he was supposed to be powering to a Premier League title.

And, if he had a bit more fire to his personality, I’d wager that Lacazette wouldn’t look all that different than Alexis, circa this time 2017.

We often criticized Alexis for his tantrums on the pitch when he wasn’t combining with the quality that he should be matched up with, but Lacazette is in the exact same boat and showing the exact same signs, as far as it mirrors his shyer personality.

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This is a problem. And it needs to be addressed right now, not “in 48 hours,” which is the timetable Wenger set.

The problem is that we have this top-tier talent in Lacazette. You can’t tell someone like that, especially someone new like that “just be patient, we will fix this.” Because context clues will tell Lacazette that the fix came too late for Alexis and Ozil, so why would the fix come in time for him. Is he willing to put three years into this club hoping that a solution is coming?

Then you risk emerging a frustrated 29 year old, like Alexis, wondering why you came to the club in the first place.

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It’s still early in his Arsenal career. I don’t think he is bankrupt in his faith in the club. But you have to address these thins early, like what didn’t happen with Alexis. These aren’t the disciple players that will follow Wenger to the end of the earth. These are ambitious, determined players that won’t settle for promises of glory on the horizon. They want it now.

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