Arsenal: Lucas Perez To Finally End The Olivier Giroud Era
Arsenal has officially announced Lucas Perez. Let’s hope that he can end the Olivier Giroud era better than Danny Welbeck did.
There was a time when Arsenal had Thierry Henry, Kanu and Dennis Bergkamp all on the same team. Three world class strikers all sharing the same locker room. Since that time, you could not find more than a single viable striker on Arsenal at any given moment.
When Robin van Persie was rocking it out, we had the likes of Lord Bentdner and that one Moroccan guy. Olivier Giroud came next and while he has done a superb job with what he’s been given, he has only ever seen competition from Lukas Podolski, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck. The former was phased out, the latter two can’t stay healthy and/or were never meant to be strikers.
Unfortunately, most of this four year period has been pinned on Giroud for not being enough. His era has been characterized by Wenger’s constant feud with the transfer market and as such, the quality has always been a bit lacking. It’s been a ‘work in progress’ per say. That progress has stepped up with Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez and Granit Xhaka but the big problem that still outlined the team was a lack of diversity up front.
Alexis and Walcott both proved that they weren’t strikers. Nobody else seemed to strike Wenger’s fancy and to a certain extent, it’s hard to blame him. No World Class strikers were available, as they rarely are, so he did the next best thing and filched someone on the sly that has only recently come into the public spectrum.
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Lucas Perez is not what we expected, but we can’t judge him yet. As I’m sure everyone has heard by now, his 27 goals contributed since last August are more than any other Spanish striker in La Liga (according to Opta Joe). Those are no sort of statistics to scoff at. He is the real deal. He knows how to score and it’s safe to assume that Perez will bring an end to the Era of Giroud.
By the Era of Giroud, I simply mean a time where Arsenal was almost entirely reliant on him. Welbeck was supposed to Giroud’s era too, but he didn’t. And he never will. Because Lucas Perez will.
There’s no tiptoeing around this. Lucas is a striker. He is not a winger. He will fight Giroud tooth and nail to take that starting role and there will be times when he is preferred, as his link up play and pace are the perfect ingredients to throw into an Arsenal attack that thrives precisely on link up play and pace.
Welcome to Arsenal, Lucas. You are going to like it here.
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