Mikel Arteta has praised Alexandre Lacazette for his recent form, after the Frenchman struck a brace in the 4-0 win over West Brom.
It made it 4 goals in his last 3 Premier League games, and it’s 5 in 4 when you count the strike against Man City in the EFL Cup defeat.
Lacazette is heading towards the final 12 months of his current contract, but there’s no sense of urgency from the manager, as he insists it’s a situation they’ll deal with at the end of the season.
“We will talk in the summer and make a decision on what is going to happen,” said the Spaniard.
“We haven’t talked about anything relating to his contract. I’m delighted with the way he is performing, the goals he is scoring and the form and energy he is in at the moment.
“He needs to keep doing that.”
Lacazette is the club’s leading scorer in all competitions this season with 9 goals to his name.
Nicolas Pepe, Eddie Nketiah and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang are next best, with 5 each.
Goal-scoring has been a bit of an issue during this campaign, and credit to Laca for his recent form.
However, from what Arteta says it seems unlikely we’ll be offering new terms to a player who, at that point, will be 30 years of age.
Given the age profile of the squad, and the need to raise funds for rebuilding, that makes sense, but let’s hope he can continue this hot streak between now and then.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but I would sell him in summer, make way for some of the young talent balogan and nketiah.
Keep on going though laca!
it’s actually a popular opinion. I like lacazette on form but he has being inconsistent due to injuries in his prime. I can only assume it would not improve as he ages. He should be sold in the summer and if not, it’s on edu and team. We can’t have another willian situation.
Maybe not nketiah, I like his passion and attitude but I don’t think that is enough for him to be our main striker. I hope he proves me wrong though
Still early days for Balogun, seems to have the physique though but if we sell Laca, then we have to get another striker. The 2 youngsters aren’t ready to lead the line on their own.
Nketiah is afobe mark 2 bt benik didnt get the chances eddie has had
Martinelli
Looks like a proper wide forward to me.
Martinelli is the new RVP. He will end up in the center and be a great success.
Pity you had to mention that Twat
Martinelli seems to play better on the wing and popping up in central areas sometimes. I wouldn’t play him upfront except on few occasions.
I don’t think Nketiah will make it at this level
Not at all… he needs to go summer for sure, but looking at previous decisions by Arteta & Edu we will give him a 3 yr contract 250k / 300k week ‘ Trusting the Process ‘
I don’t see any harm in extending for a year
Him and his agent will not accept one year.
No – we need to get out of this whole let’s tie up massive resources in old players mentality. Laca isn’t going to sign a 1 year extension either unless we pay him massively to do it – he’s 1 year away from a Bosman.
I reckon a one year contract on an annual review would be best for the club, but the player will probably be looking elsewhere for a last bumper deal.
What I do know, is that there won’t be quite so many on here screaming for him to be sold as there were last August.
Someone at Arsenal has to start thinking more carefully about how they throw around enormous contracts. Younger players not only bring a resale value, but their wages are considerably lower.
Any sucessful team has a mix of youth and experience.
I guess it will depend upon how he is doing against how Auba is. Unless Auba gets back into the scoring groove pretty quickly, we may be looking to offload him – his departure would probably raise more money than we’d get from Lacazette. Last season that would have been unthinkable but so far this season there’s only one striker in pole position – and it’s clearly not Auba.
An in form Lacazette would surely have more suitors than a no form Auba? The only reason in that situation he would not raise as much is because his contract isn’t as long. He is a year or two younger than Auba though.
I think Auba will come through the bad patch though. He looked quite determined to in the last game. I think he just needs one early goal in a game and they’ll start flowing again. Unless this is the start of an incredible decline.
Even if Auba retains his form as we all hope, we wouldn’t be able to sell him. There aren’t many clubs that would buy a 32 year old (as he’ll be at the end of season) on 350k / week.
We’ve committed to Auba, so we need to sell Laca to keep the age profile of our see strikers down and make sure we don’t end up in a couple of years with our strikers all reaching the ends of their careers at the same time.
So we’re committed to a very expensive striker who doesn’t score goals (assuming there’s no change in form, which may not be the case of course) but sell one who is scoring (with same proviso)? So where are the goals going to come from?
Crazy how many people are writing him off. He’s just out of form. He’s been immense since he arrived and needs a few to go in off his arse to get his confidence back. Surely that’s obvious?
Looks like everything is on hold till the summer. We could be a long way from any kind of European football, we could make the Europa league or even champions league if you look at how congested the table looks.
Throw in the unpredictable nature of the world due to COVID19 and the wages he commands and it all makes sense to wait till the summer
Next season, there would be one additional Europrean competition called the “UEFA Europa Conference League”. We might be in it…
Beware what you wish for… . “Arsenal win inaugural Europa Conference League final in away leg against AaB Aalborg of Denmark in front of 7,900 crowd.”
I would actually love a crowd that size. I hope the situation improves to the point that it’s safe.
Money is on Laca leaving as Arteta probably wants a Giroud-like target man based on the amount of crosses we’re putting in per game
Think we could really do with a player of the same profile as Giroud. Would add another element to our game that we don’t have right now.
A player like Duvan Zapata would be wonderful. Big, strong, quite fast and has scored a bunch in recent seasons
Zapata wouldn’t be the profile we would be looking at due to his age. Odsonne Edouard comes to mind instead but our priority would be to get a midfield partner for Partey, and if we qualify for the Champions League by hook or crook, then look further up.
This summer will certainly be interesting with Sokratis, Ozil, Mustafi, Koalsinac all off and the nest part of 600K weekly wages cleared. If Lacazette is sold, we will replace him with a striker, if not I will happily live with the current Laca till his contract expired.
I hope you’re right but Kolasinac still has 1 year left this summer, and is on big wages, so let’s hope we can shift him. Luiz and Ceballos, on the other hand, are out this summer.
Offloading Torreira and Guendouzi would do no harm to our finances too, and I hope Xhaka too. There are also big question marks on Nelson and Pepe.
That should give us enough funds for a decent midfield partner for Partey, a backup midfielder, a real backup GK and someone to replace Laca if he does leave.
How did I forget about Luiz. Ceballos would be a good replacement permanent signing for Xhaka, if he does leave. In an ideal market, both should cost the same, both have their deficiencies and certain strengths and Ceballos would be a good addition to the squad. I would be surprised if we didn’t manage to sell Chambers too for some decent money (we would still have Mari, Holding, Gabriel and Saliba on the books) I wouldn’t write Nelson off yet and Pepe seems to be more of a confidence-player than anything else. We have been pretty much shit since we… Read more »
I agree with most of your message, but would hold on to Chambers if possible, we are already going to offload 3 CBs this summer, Saliba is unproved and Chambers was really good before his injury.
When you look at Holding, it took him 2 years to fully recover, I would give Chambers the same amount of time before deciding one way or the other.
Just to let you know WE ARE NOT GOING TO QUALIFY FOR THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!
I think I read somewhere that the 1 conference league place goes to the winner of the League Cup – another reason to want Brentford to win !
Presumably if one of the top 4 wins the League Cup, the conference league spot will go to the team that finishes 6th or – depending on the FA Cup winners – the team that finishes 7th in the league – which could be Arsenal.
In that case it would be best for Arsenal if Man City won the league cup again to free up an extra European qualifying spot in the league.
No matter how poor this conference league will be, it would still generate extra cash and provide playing time for the squad fillers and Hale Enders.
On balance of form and age profile along with their styles you’d have to say that keeping Laca and moving Auba on in the summer would be the better move.
It’s quite clear who fits into our system better.
Moving him where?
If he isn’t playing well enough for us to want keep him, he isn’t playing well enough for anyone else to want to pay his silly salary either.
True to a degree, but I suspect that there would still be interest in Auba were he to be put on the market in the Summer. We wouldn’t get a fortune for him because of a combination of form (assuming it was still poor), wages and age but if we could shift him even in those circumstances it would at least ease the pressure on our still bloated wage bill.
Give me a list of better strikers than Auba in football? Lewandowski is your only bet. Arsenal is very lucky to have him.
A lack of form is a temporary thing. How possibly Auba was good for our system the last three years and not now? You really think Auba as a player is what we’ve been seeing this season so far?
I think it’s a choice between selling him or just letting it down for a final year. Probably the latter given we need to focus funds in midfield first but it all depends on what sort of offers come in between now & the end of the season.
It’s great to see him recapture his old form though. Looks a different player in the last few games.
Good. No more contracts to 30 year olds until we get most of them off the books.
The last time I checked, a guy named Ronaldo is 35, another guy named Messi is 33 and Real Madrid is hanging to a 33-years old Benzema.
In for Messi and Ronaldo are we?
Well, at least we might finally see that Benzema move.
Over 30? Max a one year rolling contract.
Unless your name is Willian
Eddie is not good enough and Auba is a lesser footballer. Arteta ‘s management of Laca has been poor. Putting in competition with Eddie a subpar player has hindered is confidence but he fought and proved he is by far our best option upfront.
Lacazette looks in physical decline, he looks knackered just warming up, I’d be inclined to take what we can, and move on ASAP Or we run the very real risk that in 2 years time, our frontline consists of Aubameyang 33, Willian 34 and Lacazette 32 We should probably do our best to avoid that scenario I don’t want to sound like captain hindsight, but I did say 3 years for Willian was mental Aubameyang at 31 was going to drop off at some point, so we might want to get what we can, avoid another big contract, and move… Read more »
Let him leave for free, ensure that we keep on delaying the talks to keep delaying the talks and let him choose any club he wants to talk to. Positive side is he will try to keep his scoring form going, negative is that he may join someone in London and come back and haunt us. But I think it would be better not to carry another big money player. We are already carrying four big money players two are not playing and two are not performing. One was signed while other signed a deal. Focus on kids and stop… Read more »