Arsenal: Alexandre Lacazette, the deserved Player of the Season

Alexandre Lacazette was named Arsenal’s Player of the Season on Friday. The French striker deserves the award after a fantastic second-year campaign.

I always squirm when individual awards are handed out in football. You could make an argument that it is the one sport that is more dependent on the team that any other, even if you have Lionel Messi as a part of that team. And, as is often the case in the glitzy, YouTube-highlight-obsessed modern world, they are often popularity contests, not awards to be considered seriously.

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The fact Luka Modric won the Ballon d’Or, for instance, just because Real Madrid lucked their way to the Champions League and Croatia made it into the World Cup is a sure sign of precisely my point. He is a brilliant player, but on a purely individual level, he was not the best player in the world, not even close.

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But fans are a little obsessed with these individual awards, and clubs, being more commercially aware than they have ever been, are embracing it. Arsenal’s Player of the Season award has been being voted in recent week. It is purely decided by the fans. It was announced on Friday that Alexandre Lacazette is the winner, totalling 35% of the vote.

Usually, I would cringe at this. Judging by some of the state of every fanbase, giving each fan a voice in what should be a serious vote is rather foolish — I am sure some of the Mesut Ozil fanboys voted for the German despite him playing vaguely well for little more than a matter of weeks.

But this time around, the fans got it right. Lacazette is the deserved Player of the Season.

18 goals in all competitions this season, Lacazette is the second-highest scorer behind Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. More importantly, though, he also has 12 assists, more than any other player in the squad, which is a clear sign of the all-round impact that he has on matches. Unlike Aubameyang, he does more than just score goals.

Lacazette’s performances in big games have also been excellent. He has scored against Liverpool, Spurs, Napoli, Chelsea, and now two against Valencia in the semi-finals of the Europa League. He also assisted goals against Manchester United home and away. Of his 18 goals, 11 of them have put Arsenal into the lead in that match, with the team proceeding to win 10 of those 11 matches.

Lacazette is a tremendous goalscorer, a tremendous all-round player, and a tremendous big-game player. There have been other good performers this season, Aubameyang, the top goalscorer, chief among them. But Lacazette has been the best.

He is the deserved Player of the Season. And given the way these individual awards usually go, I am happily surprised indeed.