Jack Wilshere says Alexandre Lacazette looked like he’d never been away after the France international made a scoring return to first team action.
The striker won and converted an 89th-minute penalty after coming on as a second half substitute as Arsenal ran out 3-0 winners against Stoke City at the Emirates.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang also helped himself to a brace although the Gunners laboured against the relegation-threatened Potters until Lacazette came off the bench on 61 minutes.
“I’m buzzing for Laca,” Wilshere told Arsenal Player at full time.
“I know how hard he’s worked. He didn’t take his injury well, but nobody does. He was down but he knew what it takes to come back.
“He’s worked hard and only trained a couple of days, but he was out there and looked like he’s not been away. It’s good for the team, good for him and I’m happy for him.”
Wilshere went on to point the finger at the long gap between games – the Gunners last played 16 days ago against Watford – as a reason for their lackadaisical performance.
“When they sit deep it’s hard to break them down, and you have to be at your best on the ball and I don’t think we were in the first half,” he reflected.
“Sometimes it’s like that after an international break, it takes 45 minutes to blow the cobwebs off.
“I think in the second half we tried to up it and as the game went on, they got tired, we upped it and our attacking play was too much for them.
“We knew they were going to sit in to hit us on the counter. You have to set yourself up so that if you lose the ball, you’re ready to press straight away.
“In the first half we weren’t really doing that. It was more stretched and we kept losing cheap balls, but in the second half we were much better.”
Good lad, Jack. Lots of goodwill for Laca, given Auba giving him the penalty to take too.
Hope Jack stays and they both have a great end to the season and the next few years.
Laca will be very useful for us at Europa. Would like to see him play alongside Mkhitaryan and Ozil. Still think he’s a better finisher than Auba just lacks the physical tools. Great on the ball too. It’s a shame though. When it comes to finishing, Laca is right up there with the best of the best.
I think he’d score loads at Liverpool like Salah
why would anyone thumb this down. he is one of the best and next season everyone is going to know.
Love Laca, he is a great finisher but not better finisher than Auba. People compare Ronaldo to Messi. In our case, Laca to Auba, luxury time.
Quality oozes through this Arsenal team. In every position we have quality. But it needs stitching together. These days, To be winners, to be champions you have to be great for 90 minutes in every game.
Thanks you for that assessment. It’s easy to disregard the quality on this team because of the results. However, there are areas that are not good enough. The goalie needs an upgrade. The DM spot needs an upgrade. I’ll also upgrade the center defense position. I’ll give Mustafi another year. He is still 24 and he’ll get better. When he is fully concentrating for 90minutes, like he was yesterday, he could be really good. He reminds me of a 24 year old Kos.
I hope so about Mustafi. But his experience at the top level is incomparable to Koscielny’s at that age. Kos had like one season in Ligue 1 before coming to Arsenal.
Isn’t that just such a damning inditement of Arsene’s current coaching and motivational ability then.. There is no way on earth the squad he has had this season is the 6th best in the league and not only that but he has had over 20 years to build it into something competitive. Yet he seems consistently unable to motivate this team for a 38 league game season. Only getting performances in must-win knockout games or end-of-season nothings – and it’s been the same for years.
All of of this is true but let’s enjoy the good run. Me, I put a good part of the blame on the players.
Nothing worse than giving away ‘cheep balls’
How about scoring an own-goal which knock out your team ???
Sounds like laca was noticibly down/anxious about his injury and the lads have done well to prop him up right for cska
I can’t wait til next season to see how the Auba/Laca partnership flourishes. Exciting times.
Only if Wenger goes
Excellent contribution from Lacazette.
I also thought BOTH Lacazette and Aubameyang seem to be working for each other.
Throw in Mhkitaryan’s influence on both Aubameyang and Ozil and we might start to see better telepathy in our forward play.
Wilshere mentions stoke sat deep, but the pressing was very intense at least for the fist half hour, and that where I think we looked most vulnerable… inferior even… our passing and first touch need to improve to rid ourselves from that kind of pressure, jacks burst of speed amd dribbling should be more useful in that situation, much more than it was yesterday, he was not very influential while we were pressed