Cheaper Alexandre Lacazette doesn’t mean failure

Arsenal may be looking at selling Alexandre Lacazette at a cut rate, but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s been a failure at the club.

As Arsenal prepare for their offseason and the massive overhaul that may or may not be coming, they are primarily going to be involved with turning this attack around. Depending on how the season plays out, we are currently at risk of losing both Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette.

For Aubameyang, an increase in wages and Champions League football may not be an option. For Lacazette, it may also be a matter of if he is the right fit for moving the club forward.

Both strikes are now looking at cut-rate fees from what we paid for them. Aubameyang’s increased fee of £70m is now settled to a disappointing £50m and Alexandre Lacazette could go for as little as £30m.

That’s disappointing as well. To think that our strikers, combined could only fetch £80m when we paid over £100m may be, to some, a sign of failure.

But we know that neither of these strikers have been a failure. I don’t even need to explain that sentiment about Aubameyang, but Lacazette hasn’t either. Lacazette’s biggest problem is he proved to be a striker that didn’t bolster his value with that many goals. Which may seem like a failure in the simplest sense, but it’s not.

Lacazette proved to be a striker the did more than score. And that’s not me trying to justify anything. It’s the truth. He was easily our player of the year last season and he only scored 13 goals in the Premier League.

That’s because he was so valuable in the attacking build-up, and in holding up play, and in linking the attack together, that he didn’t necessarily even need to score goals to be one of our best players every single week.

But you can’t quantify that value. So when clubs come and look at what he’s done, they see a goal tally that didn’t stand up to what he did in Ligue 1. They don’t see all the times his movement off the ball was vital to producing a team goal.

No matter what happens to Lacazette this summer, he’s been a fantastic addition to this Gunners’ set-up. Even if he never plays a single Champions League match for us. Not everything is as simple as goals and qualifications. Sometimes you have actually look at how a guy plays, minute by minute.