Arsenal must sell Alexandre Lacazette this summer

Arsenal Not Selling Lacazette’s Would be Insane

For whatever reason, he has made a habit of missing gilt-edged scoring chances for the entirety of his Arsenal career. At this point, there’s been a large enough sample size from Lacazette to state definitively that he is who he is. The cold hard fact of the matter is Lacazette will never be the player Arsenal was expecting when they broke their transfer record to sign him.  For all his qualities – and there are many – Laca is basically a smaller, slightly faster and much more expensive rehash of Olivier Giroud.

That’s no shot at Giroud. The big Frenchman was a bargain and he paid that investment back in spades. However, by the time he arrived, Arsenal fans had been spoiled by the brilliance of Thierry Henry and Robin van Persie. They wanted more firepower than Giroud could score, but demanding more than 12-15 goals per year from a £12m striker was always a bit unreasonable. In Lacazette’s case by contrast, getting Giroud’s production from a guy who cost four times as much is a miserable return on Arsenal’s investment. Period.

That’s why the “hold-up play and work ethic” argument that buttressed Giroud’s standing with the club simply doesn’t suffice for Lacazette. If Giroud’s hold up play and work ethic wasn’t enough to earn him a new contract two years ago, it’s certainly not enough to earn Lacazette a new contract now.

To be honest, chatting up Lacazette’s (or any other £45m striker for that matter) hold up play and work ethic is akin to bragging about how many bags of groceries and luggage can fit in the back of a sports car that has a slow 0-60 and quarter mile time. The groceries are great but the car is built to go fast. If it doesn’t do that, it’s not worth the money it cost.

Aside from Lacazette’s solid work ethic and relentless pressing, the enduring memory most fans will have of his Arsenal career is Laca with his hands on his head in shock after inexplicably having missed yet another sitter he should have scored with his eyes closed. That doesn’t merit a contract extension at Lacazette’s current wages, and it certainly doesn’t merit a pay raise. Especially in light of the fact that Laca’s already insufficient goal production will probably be declining for the full length of the contract.

None of this is to say that Lacazette is a total bust. He is a great teammate and a hard worker. He’s scored some big goals for the club, just not nearly enough of them.

With all that said, professional football is a performance based business. Based on the totality of his performances for Arsenal, the idea of a one step slower, thirty-something Lacazette earning as much, or more money than he’s making now should scare Edu, Arteta, and every Arsenal fan on the planet, to death.