Arsenal: Lucas Perez Will Outshine Jamie Vardy In Time
Arsenal’s new striker Lucas Perez has fallen under some serious criticism, but you just wait, he will learn to outshine Jamie Vardy.
Arsenal did not secure the signing of Jamie Vardy and instead ended up with Lucas Perez. Some have come to terms with it, some apparently still haven’t. Gary Lineker falls in the latter category, as he has gone ahead and said that Vardy would walk right into the Arsenal starting XI.
Well, I disagree with Gary, but I’m not here to figuratively debate him. I’m here to say that Lucas, in time, will prove a better striker than Jamie Vardy. And I believe I have the evidence to support it.
For starters, we have to look at what Vardy did in his first year in the Premier League. Newly-promoted Leicester handed the explosive Englishman 2200 minutes of playing time and, to put it nicely, he struggled with it. He scored just five goals although he did land a healthy eight assists.
That’s not an indictment on his abilities, as we’ve seen. It takes a bit to get acclimated to the Premier League and Vardy took some time. He took far less shots per game and you could attribute that to the team, but you still have to judge that goal total as rather paltry.
The next year he scored 24 in 3100 minutes and won the league.
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Now, at 29 years of age, Vardy is off to a good start with two goals in four matches.
How do we compare this to Lucas? Well, it’s hard to. But if Lucas can score more than five goals and provide more than eight assists, then he will be on a better track than Jamie Vardy was. I think it’s safe to assume that Lucas will surpass this goal total for sure and the assist total isn’t completely impossible. Lucas is a passing forward and Arsenal will benefit from that ability as a team with fluidity in their attack.
Which brings me to my biggest point – Lucas is on a team that is built for him to succeed in. He is the perfect transition striker. Giroud’s hold-up and link-up play was great, but his lack of pace can be bothersome. Lucas has link-up play and pace to go with it. Give this Spaniard time and those 17 La Liga goals could quickly turn into 10, 15 even 20 Premier League goals.
It will take time, but it took Vardy time too. Earlier today I pointed out that we should absolutely not be judging Lucas and I hold to that. You may look at Vardy as a ‘finished’ version of Lucas, but we didn’t get him, so the next best thing is to get someone similar to Vardy that will grow to surpass him.
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