How Will You Reflect on Lacazette's Time At Arsenal?

So, after five years at Arsenal, it appears as though Lacazette will be going back to Lyon on a free transfer. When we signed him during Summer 2017, we paid £45m, which eclipsed the £42.5m we paid for Mesut Ozil as our club-record fee.

He ends his time at Arsenal on 206 appearances, 71 goals and 38 assists.
He was voted as POTS for the 18/19 campaign and was our top-goalscorer in the 2017/18 & 2020/21 seasons.
He won a Community Shield in 2017 and an FA Cup in 2020. He also has a runners-up medal from the Europa League final in 2019.

How will you reflect on his time at Arsenal?

For me personally, whilst I appreciate he was a fan favourite and had a bit of a cult hero type status, he didn't fulfil the objective of why we signed him.
When we bought him as our record signing (at the time), the purpose for his transfer was that his goals and contributions in attack would get us back into the Champions League. That hasn't happened during his time here.

He never hit more than 19 goals in a single season across all competitions and, in the league, never scored more than 14.
And although for his first few seasons, his hold-up play was good and linked up well with other attackers, he was never the killer striker we needed in front of goal, or someone who could win us a game single-handedly with brilliance. He wasn't particularly clinical in front of goal and his lack of athleticism/stamina hindered us at times.

I'll always appreciate his service for the club, and wish him well back in France, but I simply cannot view him as a successful signing for us.

 

Three days later and no responses, the silence is deafening, Brunel .

All seriousness though from an outsider’s view I think Lacazette was a decent player for you and there seemed about an 18 month spell where he and Aubameyang were extremely good together but I’d say for the money you paid you wanted him to be a fair bit better than decent. Underwhelming for the fee that was paid but not a flop either.

 

For me personally, I think he only really had one very good season and that was the 18/19 season where he rightfully won POTS. He was slightly above average in all his other seasons and, as you say, when you pay a club-record fee for a striker, you expect him to do better than that. Not being able to hit more than 14 league goals is quite poor IMO.

He did contribute in some big games against all the top-six and in Europe too, but in terms of performing on a consistent basis? Nah. I don't think he can be deemed a success for that fee and the expectations placed on him at the time.

 

Good servant to the club. But ultimately fell short of being the complete striker that we needed to take up back to the top level.

 

nice bloke and well liked by teammates it would seem, and popular with fans but fir me he wasn’t ever an elite striker.
We needed a clinical striker which he isn’t, he was another Giroud type of player

 

I think he was signed at a time when we wanted to push on, but unfortunately he ended up coming right when we entered our worst period in recent history.

he never quite seemed to fit in our team. Not a flop, but definitley under-delivered on certain expectations. (He came at a time where we were crying out for a striker other than giroud for 2-3 years)

 

He always worked his socks off but I do find his Arsenal career very strange.

When he came to Arsenal he was known as a sharp traditional number 9. He was a goalscorer. I wondered if his all round game would be good enough for the League.

Over his time at Arsenal his all round play got better and better but the goals dried up.

Still I always liked him. Wish him all the best at Lyon.