Arsenal vs Newcastle: Alexandre Lacazette’s encore?

Arsenal’s experimentation should continue against Newcastle, but one experiment is over – Alexandre Lacazette. It’s time for his grand, encore performance.

Arsenal’s striker situation was made a lot more complicated than it needed to be through the first three matches. Although, to be fair, Unai Emery was merely trusting Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Mesut Ozil to do the heavy lifting, which is the part that blew up in his face. When neither proved capable of providing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang with consistent chances, things got a bit dicey.

But with the diciness came the changes. Emery finally put Alexandre Lacazette into the starting role against Cardiff City and, just like that, the Frenchman was an easy Man of the Match with a goal, an assist, and more influence than Ozil and Mkhitaryan combined over four matches (probably).

Newcastle United is next up, at St. James Park, and they have yet to win a game. They are going to be riled up, fired up, and determined to frustrate the Gunners as they have done so many times in the past (and as the Gunners are rather susceptible to).

The fact of the matter is that Arsenal’s defense is terrible. They’ve given up two more goals than Newcastle, yet Newcastle are the ones in the relegation fight.

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The point is, we will need goals, lots of goals, because Lord knows there won’t be a clean sheet on the cards for our Gunners. And the primary threat right now is Alexandre Lacazette, who should absolutely be in that starting XI today. Ideally, he will be just as wound up as he was against Cardiff, too, even in spite of the international break, because we really need to see him do what he did against the Welsh side.

Not to mention it would go a long way towards solidifying his place in the team. Granted, it should have already been solidified, but you can never be too safe when it comes to a new era at the club. With so much competition up front for so many spots, Lacazette will have to be at his best and he will be well aware of this necessity.

Anyone can do something once. Do it twice and then we’re talking. Three times? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s see him do it twice first.