Alexandre Lacazette thriving at sharp end after Emery finally gets his man

Six matches into the Unai Emery era, Alexandre Lacazette sat on the substitutes’ bench watching his teammates stroll through the flaky line of Vorskla Poltava’s defence in the Europa League. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang helped himself to a couple of tasty goals. Danny Welbeck scored too, then Mesut Özil came on to celebrate a feelgood strike.

Meanwhile Lacazette stayed unused on the bench and slunk deep into his seat looking a little bit envious. All strikers crave goals to fuel confidence and the Frenchman’s start to the season needed a boost. He had one goal from that first six games, and had been in the starting XI only twice, so there was reason to ponder how it was all going to map out for him under Emery.

In the string of matches since twiddling his thumbs in the background against Vorskla Poltava, something has clicked for Lacazette. He has been influential, decisive, a headache for opposition defenders and has forced his way to the forefront of Emery’s gameplan.

The conundrum of how to best use the qualities of Lacazette and Aubameyang has been intriguing ever since Arsenal signed their second £50m-plus striker in successive windows last January – the pair are great friends and like to play together but more often than not in the interests of team balance one has to go wide. The Frenchman has the edge at the moment in terms of playing centrally, with his work rate and link-up play impressing as much as his more focused eye for a goal.

Emery’s faith in Lacazette manifests itself as a mixture of encouragement for what he is doing well with the push to find extra. The coach and player speak a lot. “This year we are looking at him to go one step more in this level,” Emery says. “We are very happy but my message to him is: every day, don’t stop. Don’t stop in training, don’t stop in matches, carry on to find his best performance. In each minute of the 90 minutes he is doing that. With his characteristics we need him to stay feeling well in the team with the role and his quality. He has a very good mentality, good chances to score and is very efficient.”

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Adaptation to English football was not particularly easy in his first season, as Lacazette tried to settle into a team going through turbulence during Arsène Wenger’s final season. This campaign he is playing with sharper confidence and on a better wavelength with his teammates. Arsenal played their most promising attacking football of the season in a blistering second half at Fulham, a game in which both Lacazette and Aubameyang scored twice and afterwards they spoke of feeling “like brothers”.

Emery, as is his wont, looks at something promising and demands more. “I want every player in the dressing room to feel like brothers with each other.”

The Spaniard is enjoying working with Lacazette but notes that might have happened in an entirely different place had football’s sliding doors moved differently. When Emery joined Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2016, a certain striker was on their wish list. “When I arrived at PSG we were thinking to sign Lacazette,” he explains. “We liked his quality and his characteristics. The people who were working there said to us: ‘This player has the quality to play for PSG’. He was an option for us.”

The move never quite materialised because of the rivalry between potential buyer and seller. “He was at Lyon and it wasn’t easy to have the conversation or to sign a player between those two clubs.”

That summer, Wenger was trying to recruit Jamie Vardy for Arsenal but that was another move that faltered. Had that happened, the option to bring Lacazette and then Aubameyang to north London might never have opened up.

On Monday night they will all be striving for goals as Arsenal host Leicester, with Emery’s team aiming to increase their winning sequence to 10 in a row across all competitions. “Usually I want to break my statistics, thinking wins, thinking of the best performance, and the next match is Leicester,” says Emery. “If we are thinking it’s easy, maybe that’s a weakness. Our weakness is if we look a lot behind us at the last matches.”