L’Equipe report this afternoon that Alexandre Lacazette is set to rejoin former club Lyon.
He left L’OL in the summer of 2017, signing for Arsenal in a deal that cost the club around £50m.
L'OL a convaincu son ancien buteur Alexandre Lacazette de revenir au club, après cinq saisons à Arsenal, où il était en fin de contrat. L'annonce est imminente. https://t.co/lFaUNHvzLv pic.twitter.com/L2WhS6yuKB
— L'ÉQUIPE (@lequipe) June 2, 2022
Since then, he has made 206 appearances in red and white, scoring 76 goals and providing 30+ assists.
Last season was his least productive in the five years he’s been at the club, with just 6 goals in 36 appearances in all competitions.
After the Everton game on the final day of the season, he spent time on the pitch with family members – all sporting Lacazette 9 shirts – and throughout the campaign, despite many questions about the Frenchman’s future, Mikel Arteta never gave any hint Arsenal would offer new terms.
L’Equipe say an announcement is ‘imminent’, and we’ll confirm here as and when it happens.
Good.
Thanks Laca, you’ve been great xx
The last two years weren’t good but before that, Laca was a top player for us, almost like Son was for the Spurs.
Great attitude, great bloke. Best of luck for the future…..
Though it must be weird going to a team called “LOL.”
If there’s also a team called LMAO, that just seals the deal for me.
Wenger’s final signing (Sven M scouted from then on). I think he was looking for a striker close in style to Alexis.
76 in 206 isn’t all that bad in fairness. Easy to forget he was our player of the season not that long ago. He seemed to subscribe to the Gattuso mantra of sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe…not so good. Probably could have done with selling on last summer, but we are where we are. Cheers Laca!
I think Arsenal would have happily moved Laca on last year, but despite only having 1 year left on his contract and therefore available at lower cost there were no takers. Just sums up his averageness! Nice guy. Tried hard. But just not the required quality if we want to progress.
And nkietah is…??
Always liked him and wish him all the best but I remember wondering how we buy a guy that’s behind Giroud in the national team but expect him do upgrade us.
Fans player of the year in his first full year. Always puts a shift in. Generally a top bloke with no external noises when he wasn’t getting picked.
Not his fault we overpaid for him expecting an upgrade on Giroud. I think over time, history will look favourably on his Arsenal years.
We should all wish him well.
Despite his lack of goals this season he did lead the line and help the others.
I’m sure we can upgrade but was a class player throughout.
History looks back on Giroud’s sale as a big mistake. Lacazette was an inferior player since day one. Now 5 years on Giroud is the Italian champions’ most reliable goal scorer at 35. Laca meanwhile has been auditioning to be accepted by a care home for the last few years, in his last season especially. Good guy but his signing was an immense mistake from the get go to.
what a load of shit
Damn. Thus ends the “Hooked on a Feeling” Laca-Xhaka-Saka rhythm…..
No disrespect to Laca or Auba, but we really should have never let Giroud go. He won the league with AC Milan this year and did wonderful things for Chelski.
Best of luck to Laca, he is a likeable player who worked very hard for the team. I will especially miss his successful use of the dark arts!
I hear what you are saying about Giroud, and don’t disagree.
However, I seem to recall that he didn’t want to miss out on any call ups to the French national team, and therefore demanded game time, either at Arsenal or another club.
It’s interesting that he’s currently on course to become the all-time leading goal scorer for France. Let’s see if he overtakes Thierry Henry in 1st place at some point this year.
I also recall that a fair chunk of the fan base desperately wanted an upgrade on Giroud when he was with us, even though he scored pretty consistently.
Hard to argue that Auba wasn’t an upgrade on the goal scoring front.
Giroud was consistent every season in that he also consistently went off the boil every season at the same point too. A really good player but another who couldn’t lead the line every week.
That was after Laca usurped him as a starter at the beginning of the 17/18 season. Giroud left that january, didnt want to risk losing his place in the french national team, with WC 2018 coming up.
And the same month, Auba joined us.
I would have liked to have seen Auba and Giroud in the same team.
Good luck to Lacca, always fully committed and seemed a decent guy.
We would never have signed Aubameyang who was a far more clinical striker. Giroud did very little for Chelsea as he only scored 17 goals in 75 matches in 3 seasons.
I am a big fan of Giroud but this is revisionism. We replaced him with Aubameyang–not Lacazette– who was perhaps the most sought-after striker in Europe at that time. Everyone (rightly) thought that was an upgrade.
I don’t watch Italian football much and can’t talk about Milan, but I pay close attention to France. Giroud’s value was his ability to mesh with Griezmann and then with both Griezmann and Mbappe. We did not have those players.
No, it isn’t. We bought Lacazette as an expected upgrade to Giroud. It didn’t work out. It just so happened that when we went for Aubameyang, Dortmund and Chelsea had to replace their outgoing players.
And no, we didn’t have Griezman and mbappe. We had Sanchez and prime ozil
It would have been rough, and I don’t know how fans would have responded, but possibly the right thing would have been to send Laca to Dortmund. He was probably better than Batshuyi (im pretty sure that’s spelt wrong) so maybe bvb would have been interested.
But revisionism is maybe the right word. Laca started well, and while I was always in camp Giroud he was a devisive character with a bad habit of missing some glaring opportunities. But most good strikers do they. Even Auba missed a bunch. Its about brushing it off and going again.
“It just so happened”?? We kept Giroud when we got Lacazette and we lost Giroud when we got Aubamayang. I may be stupid, but to me that looks like we replaced Giroud with Aubamayang, not with Lacazette. On the other point, I think you have misunderstood. It’s not that Ozil or Alexis weren’t as good or better than Griezmann, but that Giroud uniquely fit into an attacking system based on Griezmann’s strengths. Both the system and the players fit together. For example, I think Giroud would be very good with someone like De Bruyne too–but in France’s setup, not in… Read more »
Great servant of the club; a gentleman on and off the pitch. He was by no means the striker we needed for the next level, highlighted by Auba’s arrival six months later; but he gave his all at all times.
I wish him well as he goes into the twilight of his career.
Agreed. Merci Lacca! Gooner thru and thru
That’s good for him.
To be honest this season he has been awful which is odd because he was basically playing for a new contract elsewhere.
He did a reasonable job for Arsenal so the best of luck to him..
That’s BS….he stepped up when we let Auba go and he was excellent Dec thru Feb when we had our best run of the season. He ran out of gas in March no doubt but he was a big leader for us over winter.
How many of the 76 goals are penalty kicks. He was a waste of money in fees and wages. Can you imagine the qualities of Sadio Mane season after season and yet paid only 100k a week
Arsenal is wasteful
Such a weird question (which you could’ve easily just googled yourself). Do penalties not count as goals in whatever version of football you watch?
Actually not as many as you’d think given Auba was our penalty taker most of that time.
Finally!
He was never the player we needed to help us to the next level and won’t be missed. Shame really as he was a great guy by all accounts and had an excellent attitude, tried hard, but ultimately wasn’t good enough. Just another average player who managed to stick around longer than he should have.
Thanks for everything Laca.
Will also remember your “screamer” against Burnley
*pun intended*
*always
Good man he is.
Wish him the best, a true professional
I can see why the youngsters look up to him
Lacca Boss. Sad it ended with a whimper. Wish you well.
This was always inevitable from the moment he arrived. Lyon have been talking about Laca non-stop since he left them. He doesn’t really leave a legend but as a player I’ll generally remember fondly. He was our best player at times but didn’t sustain it. I will always appreciate his effort and grit, although a bit like a walkman running out of battery Lacazette could never quite get through both halves without slowing down.
He was a good servant of the club and deserves nothing but respect.
Also, I think it is good that his worst season happened to be the the one before his contract expired, not the first one after resigning for huge money (like it has so often been the case).
That image of him when Auba dropped the FA cup.
Solid pro. Best of luck to the man.
Crazy to think we spent £110m ish on two strikers within 6 months, and got zero back for either 4/5 years later.
We can slag off petro/state owned clubs all we want but that’s a worse investment than most of those clubs make.
City/Chelsea actually make some good transfer (or investment) moves.