Arsenal: If not now for Alexandre Lacazette, when?

Arsenal’s upcoming match against Cardiff City has a lot of talking points, not least of all Alexandre Lacazette. If he doesn’t start now, will he ever?

Arsenal’s new process of experimentation under Unai Emery doesn’t seem to include Alexandre Lacazette. The French striker has yet to start a game, despite the clear and obvious need for him, and it has done the inevitable and kicked up transfer rumors.

What’s not helping matters is that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has yet to score a goal. As of now, Danny Welbeck is our leading goal scorer and he’s tied with Nacho Monreal. Not exactly where a team with both Lacazette and Aubameyang expects to be, even just three measly matches into the season.

For the upcoming match against Cardiff, a gritty team that won’t given the Gunners a lot of space on the attacking end, I can’t help but think that Lacazette would be a much better option than any other attack out there.

Better even than Aubameyang. While I wouldn’t suggest benching Aubameyang ever, if that is the only way that Lacazette is going to start, then isn’t now a good time to go ahead and do that?

Nothing about the way that Cardiff plays benefits the Gabonese striker. He likes to have plenty of space to stretch his legs. He won’t find that against Cardiff. He likes to run in behind defenses. He won’t have that either.

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What he will have are tight spaces, a need for delicate and near-perfect first touches and an ability to score from all over the goal box and beyond, wherever he can latch onto the ball.

Which doesn’t sound like Aubameyang at all, it sounds like Alexandre Lacazette, the maligned striker who can’t buy a start.

Lacazette has shown, in all-too-small quantities this year, that he is still a specialist at all these things – finishing from distance and from odd angles, turning with the ball, sparking an attack with a fantastic touch. All of these things are prototypical Lacazette, the kinds of things that he was made to do.

So if you aren’t going to start him in a match that favors his strengths, then are you really ever going to start him? Perhaps in time, when you’ve been worn down so much that you don’t have a choice, but please say we’re not going to wait that long.

Get Lacazette out there. I’m really tired of having to write articles about this subject matter.