Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick making history

Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick are making history with the number of goals they are collectively scoring. Whenever they’re leading the line, Arsenal have a chance.

In Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Arsenal have two of the very best strikers in the Premier League. The art of the strike partner may be one that is diminishing, — or has already diminished — but in these two, the Gunners have one of the very best. And that, even in the modern age, is a unique and dangerous weapon.

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And Lacazette and Aubameyang particularly are not just any old partnership. This is a strike partnership that is in the business of making history.

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Thanks to a brilliant article by Malik Ouzia of the London Evening Standard, which you can read here, some goalscoring statistics comparing the Lacazette-Aubameyang pairing to others in the Premier League and in Arsenal’s history have surfaced. They are quite staggering.

In 474 minutes of action since Aubameyang’s arrival that the pair has featured in alongside one other, they have combined for 11 goals. That is an average of just over two goals per game, or a goal every 43.09 minutes. It took Gabriel Jesus and Sergio Aguero, the league-leading strike partnership in regards recognition, 495 minutes to reach 11 goals, while Alexis Sanchez and Romelu Lukaku scored just six in their first 500 minutes together.

Lacazette and Aubameyang are at the top of this list, and only Jesus and Aguero come close to matching them, such is the prolificacy and relentlessness of their scoring.

Historically, the picture is similar: Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry only scored three goals in their first 494 minutes; Bergkamp and Ian Wright also only scored three goals, though in their first 450 minutes (still a similar time period to the Lacazette and Aubameyang one).

This season alone, Lacazette and Aubameyang have scored twice in 170 minutes, yielding a goal every 85 minutes. The goal-a-game strike rate is less than last season’s efforts, but given that Lacazette has started three games on the bench, two of the four matches have come against Chelsea and Manchester City, and that four games is a small sample size to deal with, it is not inconceivable, barring injury, that the two could top 50 goals combined. The last time two Arsenal players combined for more than 50 goals in a season, Arsene Wenger was leading his team to an unbeaten season, Robert Pires and Thierry Henry totalling 58 goals that year.

Lacazette and Aubameyang, at this early stage, comprise one of the most prolific strike partnerships the Premier League has ever seen. Admittedly, the sample size is painfully small and it would be absurd to expect them to continue their goal-every-43.09-minutes rate. But that does not detract from the unrelenting threat that they pose in spearheading Arsenal’s attack.

There may be defensive issues. There may be problems in possession, in controlling games, in mental fortitude, organisation, and in how to win games. But in Lacazette and Aubameyang, Arsenal can always score goals. That makes them uniquely dangerous.