Arsenal: If you have to sell someone, sell this one man

Arsenal may have to make some unfortunate decisions this summer, but if they absolutely must make a big sale, make it be this guy.

There are plenty of players that I am okay with Arsenal selling. Most of which I even encourage. Shkodran Mustafi, Mesut Ozil, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Mohamed Elneny, even Alex Iwobi. Sell them. If the price is right, sell them. And for the likes of Ozil, the price doesn’t even have to be right.

But there’s no hiding from the fact that altogether, that still doesn’t get us the funds we need to truly restock this club the way it needs to be restocked. I have dreams of Matthijs de Ligt and Samuel Umtiti anchoring this defense next year, and that alone will cost £100m. So if you want more than that, we need to make a big sale.

Unfortunately, there also just aren’t that many big sales that we have the capability of making. What it comes down to is either Alexandre Lacazette or Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. You sell one of them, you bring in such a healthy amount of money while also trimming the wage bill.

But for me, between the to of them, assuming you have to sell one at all, it has to be Aubameyang. Now, again, I don’t want him sold, but if you’re telling me we have to make a big sale, I’d rather him than Lacazette.

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It’s just a matter of versatility. I love having a Golden Boot winner on the club, a guy who just understands goal scoring, but he doesn’t have the same facilities as Lacazette. He doesn’t control the ball well, he doesn’t create for himself, he relies a lot on other players, and with the route that this club is going, there are going to be a lot of moving pieces and finding reliability will not be an easy ask.

Meaning that Aubameyang may have troubles latching onto good service while the club finds its footing again, and as we saw this year, when Aubameyang is ineffective, he is really ineffective.

Lacazette doesn’t rely on service or anything, really. It makes him better, but all in all, he can make things happen for himself and for others, he can drop deeper, control the ball, drive with it and become a facilitator as much as a finisher.

I’d hate to break up the bromance, but if you have to sell one to raise the money that we can’t find elsewhere, then make it be from Aubameyang, not Lacazette.