Alexandre Lacazette

We dont play with a false 9 CF and never have.

Firmino actual false 9. First 3 pl games. Lacazette is always near the last defender in games and hes always furthest forward and defence if it was false 9 youd see the wingers far more advanced whilst laca drops onto the middle. You would also see more than 14 bloody passes a game if he dropped deeper to help the play.

Our games vs leicester and bournemouth

You cant blame other players for lacazette always being in the wrong place or for him missing golden chances most games, what gets us riled up

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nah he isn’t exactly a false 9 but you bunch together where he’s playing when we start play and where he’s at after we’ve established possession in front of their goal, he plays pretty similar to one when we start play, that’s the key point, and he spends a lot of the time once we’re up there hoovering outside the box trying to enable our wide players. We don’t push our wingers up excessively wide early on since they’re supposed to be back mid to help out defensively. Most of the time he spends up there when we don’t have the ball is to press them when they start their play from the back.

So like any striker in the league hes near the box but also presses the defenders. But he only wins the ball once makes 14 successful passes per 90 (not even sure how many of those are from kick off) and has 2 shots.

I wish I could back players like Lacazette, but when Emery took over the whole team did what there doing right now. Pressed every loose ball tried their absolute hardest, but after a few months they couldn’t be bothered. The attitude isnt right at all, we signed Lacazette and ever since then, not blaming him only obviously that would be mental, but ever since then we have been shit at scoring and we have dropped down the table.

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You want to claim, in some sense, our chance created and scoring wasn’t shit before Lacazette joined?

More, we signed an in demand striker to replace Giroud and we achieved fuck all from it.

Lacazette was always a signing that symbolised Wenger’s acceptance of mediocrity and poor investment strategy.

Question is now do we offer an extension to Laca in the summer as he’ll have two years left to run

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At the time we signed Laca, he was the best striker available for our club.

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I honestly don’t get the point you’re making. Arsenal has been regressing since '12 and none of the signings made in that stretch made Arsenal better.

With Ozil we had a small uptick in our fortunes, but the Ozil signing itself was probably not needed since Cazorla was already here and we needed a proper winger to replace Gervinho/Walcott as they were really shit

So? That doesn’t make a poor signing a good deal.

His actual output and performances to date haven’t been better than anything we saw from Giroud

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FgU9JEo

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Hilarious

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The thing is as well, most people knew he just wasn’t that good. We just wanted something that was different to Giroud because it was obvious that Giroud wasn’t cut out for it.

The reality is that he just isn’t that good. He should be shifted as priority in the summer whilst he still retains a nice market value.

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Martenelli has s chance to put this to bed once and for all with some decent performances and goals.

You cannot dispute what’s Laca’s role in the team. He and Ozil are bundled together, creating space and interplaying while Auba/Pepe are trying to get in the box. Auba more of natural poacher so it’s easier for him to get in the right space while Pepe likes to take to defenders on and combine with AMN, Ozil and Laca to make his way to the box.

You’re describing any lone striker in a 2 offensive winger formation.

A false 9 is involved far more than Lacazette is. If he completed more than 14 passes a game I’d say yeah sure he inter plays with ozil and others to create space. But in 90 minutes he makes 14 passes.

We can make money on him, it can help us rebuild, we should take this opportunity to improve our team and get rid of average players who have shown us their level, which is not good enough for Arsenal or top 4.

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Nope.

K.

There was a lot of hope when he first came in, and his 2016-17 ligue 1 season was still really good, even if you include the penalties.

He had really power and good ability to work in tight spaces as well, and very good shot selection. He just didn’t take enough.

Same when he first came. It was an encouraging start.

It’s a real shame that instead of kicking on and becoming a top class striker, he has gotten worse at taking shots, his shot power seems to have gone, and he seems to be slower and more unfit than he used to be.

A lot of it is confidence but he has gone in the opposite direction to what he should have to make it here.

I think this was inevitable, he doesn’t have the physical gifts or natural striker instincts to maximise his ability.

Doesn’t have great movement, ability to gain separation from defenders or that intangible quality of sniffing out goals.

When you looked at him in Ligue 1 it was always going to be an uphill battle in a league such as this.

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Just scrolling up to see what the original opinion on Laca was. Came across this. So… what’s the conclusion? :laughing: