Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s challenge

Arsenal have two class strikers on their books, in case you didn’t notice, and with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s challenge, Alexandre Lacazette is set.

There is one area of this Arsenal team that has not been talked about at all in the past several months. Which, let’s be honest, is one hell of a gift that we just aren’t used to having. There are always so many questions across the board.

But at striker, there just aren’t. The only question is how we can fit so much talent into one position.

With both Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette on the books, there is a surplus of goal-scoring ability that will help them play off of each other to maximum effectiveness. We knew this already though, we saw it last season.

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What we now have is a boxing match between two strikers on the same team who both want the same thing. How long we can prolong that is a question, I suppose, but for now, the benefits far outweigh any potential looming dread.

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What happened last season is that Aubameyang threw the first punch, and it was a massive hook. He came into the team and, from a wide position that he would rather not play, he put up a sensational goal tally, scoring nearly once per 90 minutes played. He was a monster and a half.

Lacazette got back on track in the meantime, but he did not match Aubameyang in hard production. Meaning that Lacazette’s first chance to match him, to deliver that return punch, is going to be at the start of the season.

We talk about internal competition a lot here – or at least I do. This is the incarnation of internal competition, and it hasn’t even started yet. This all starts next season, with the return fire from Lacazette.

It’s all about how Lacazette rises to the challenge that Aubameyang has put down. It’s one hell of a challenge though. I would love to sit here and say that Lacazette can rise to it an answer, but in the end, that isn’t even the biggest question. The biggest question is how to maximize the two of them in tandem, not one in spite of the other.

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This is what we’ve been waiting on for years. We waded through years with Olivier Giroud hoping to eventually reach something like this, but it never came. Now we have it. Two elite strikers challenging each other. Hopefully Lacazette can throw a challenge back.