Arsenal: Selling Alexandre Lacazette accomplishes nothing

A rogue rumor has popped up that Arsenal are looking to sell Alexandre Lacazette this summer, which would accomplish all of nothing.

I understand that any rumors regarding potential buys and sells are, as of right now, completely worthless, since no one is buying or selling at the moment, and with Arsenal‘s budget still a big ol’ question mark, there’s no reason to lose our minds over who may or may not have to be sold to raise money for necessary summer repairs.

But Alexandre Lacazette should be immediately pulled off the table as he is, without a shadow of a doubt, our best all-around player. And yes, please come at me all you in disagreement, I’m prepared for you.

Whatever the motive behind selling Lacazette might be, I have zero belief that we could sell him for what he is worth to us. He will be judged by his goal production which, let’s be honest, isn’t out of this world. But it has to be said that for this club, scoring goals isn’t necessarily the be all, end all of strikers anymore.

Lacazette contributes so much more to the build up in a club that can’t seem to wrap their collective head around how to build up. He is a better finisher than Aubameyang, a better handler of the ball and a better passer.

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He does the creation duties better than most of the creative midfielders that are supposed to be feeding him opportunities and what he gives you in the box is something that we can’t find in any of our other players.

Do the numbers back up the exorbitant value that he currently has with us? Absolutely not. Suffice to say he is creating a goal (either scoring or assisting) every 111 minutes. If you want to say that Aubameyang does it better, Auba is at 106 minutes (so yeah, he technically does, but…).

The point is simple – the way that Arsenal are built, we need a striker like Lacazette because he brings out the best in Aubameyang (among other reasons). Have one without the other and it’s like eating rice with only one chopstick.

Sell Lacazette, and you won’t be able to replicate what he brings to the club. Unless we can suddenly completely redo the entire attack around Aubameyang (which we can’t in one summer), then you’re better off doing the smart thing and just keeping hold of him, for the love of everything.