Arsenal, Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Auabemeyang: Was this a mistake?

Arsenal signed Alexandre Lacazette for £47 million. They then signed Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for £56 million. Was this a mistake by Arsene Wenger and the club?

Arsenal needed a new striker. Over a series of years, Olivier Giroud had proven that he lacked the elite, cutting-edge quality to spearhead the strikeforce, and Arsene Wenger had seemingly come to this realisation given his use of the Frenchman in the season prior. Alexis Sanchez was under a cloud of transfer rumour, unwilling to sign a new deal and not really a natural striker. Danny Welbeck was seen, rightly, as nothing more than versatile depth.

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And so the decision was taken to invest in a new centre-forward. That centre-forward was Giroud’s international competitor Alexandre Lacazette, who arrived for a club-record £47 million. It was presumed that he would then take on the mantle of the Arsenal centre-forward role.

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Fast-forward six months, Lacazette’s confidence was decimated, his form was little more than disastrous, not that he was helped by those around him, and his future at the club seemed somewhat uncertain. That was because, in the very next window, the Gunners had ostensibly deemed Lacazette short of the desired quality, breaking their club-record for the second time on a speedy centre-forward in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

That is why Sunday’s 2-1 loss to Newcastle United is so significant for these two players. This was the first time that the two started a game together. It had been hinted at previously, with Wenger stating that he believed it was possible in the prior week, and the two playing together against Southampton when Lacazette was introduced from off the bench. And for me, the way in which they were used was extremely telling.

Wenger, unwilling to relinquish his lone-striker system that he has unwaveringly used for over a decade now, shifted Aubameyang out to the left wing, a position that he had played in his younger years, and fielded Lacazette through the middle.

It can only make me question the transfer plans of this club, however. They haven’t broken their transfer record since 2013 and then they do it twice on two players who play very similar positions in a very similar fashion only to then play one of those two players away from their natural position.

That smells, to me, like a mistake. Somewhere, at some point, there has been a change in the plan. Lacazette perhaps did not pan out quite as Wenger and the club thought. Maybe they thought they needed a winger and believed that Aubameyang was the best player that they could acquire. It just doesn’t quite make sense.

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Now that these two players are in the squad, I do believe that the best system is Lacazette through the middle and Aubameyang out wide. But somewhere along the way, plan A has been lost. Somewhere, a mistake has been made.