Alexandre Lacazette in familiar territory at Emirates Cup as he looks to hit the ground running with Arsenal

James Benge28 July 2017

Seven years on from his North London bow Alexandre Lacazette is heading back to the Emirates Cup.

Across three appearances at Arsenal’s ground he has gone from prodigy to £52million man, meaning that even for a pre-season friendly the pressure is on Lacazette.

It is a far cry from the 19-year-old Lyon striker that first arrived at Arsenal’s pre-season tournament in the summer of 2010.

By rights he shouldn’t have been there. Only 24 hours earlier he had celebrating a European Under-19s title with future team-mate Francis Coquelin. Lacazette had scored the winner; hours later he was rewarded with a starting spot in Claude Puel’s side.

Though he didn’t get on the scoresheet Lacazette was a livewire presence across the weekend, sufficiently exciting that a year on from Karim Benzema’s departure to Real Madrid it seemed Lyon had a new hometown hero.

It would take time for the youngster to carve out a regular starting spot ahead of Bafetimbi Gomis and Lisandro Lopez. Those years were not kind for Lyon, who had been picked apart by Europe’s top sides for a decade, and they struggled to consistently qualify for the Champions League.

The sale of Lopez in 2013 unleashed Lacazette, who under the tutelage of former Arsenal midfielder Remi Garde moved from industrious right winger to explosive centre forward. His first 93 games for OL had brought 16 goals. In the next 100 he found the net 54 times.

Arsenal in training | 26/07/2017

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By the time a much-improved Lyon returned to the Emirates Cup in 2015 they were Lacazette’s team – but he was already being linked with a move to the Emirates.

It may only have been a pre-season friendly but the sense around the Emirates was that game represented a chance for Lacazette to make his big impression on Wenger, who was then in the midst of his regular hunt to find an improvement on Olivier Giroud.

If it was an audition it would be fair to say Lacazette did not look the part. Somehow the centre-forward stood out as perhaps his team’s worst performer even as Arsenal ran riot over the Lyon defence in a 6-0 win.

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Perhaps it is too much to put Wenger’s oscillating over Lacazette’s worth last summer, when Arsenal’s £29million offer was scarcely half of Lyon’s asking price, down to that performance. But that pre-season fixture seemed to crystallise many of the limitations in the striker’s game.

He seemed to be offside as a matter of course, was all too easily outfought by Per Mertesacker and offered little with the ball at his feet.

Happily for Wenger much of that seems to have changed in the past two years. Most significantly his hold up play has dramatically improved, such that he will be as effective laying-off to Alexis Sanchez as running on to Mesut Ozil’s passes.

Saturday and Sunday’s game may not come with the weight of expectation that his Premier League debut will bring but for Lacazette a return to familiar surroundings offers him the chance to hit the ground running.