Alexandre Lacazette has the firepower to break the curse of the Arsenal No9s

The No9 shirt is iconic at many clubs, but Alexandre Lacazette only has the numerical pressure of his price tag at Arsenal.

Lacazette, a £52.7million summer signing from Lyon, follows in the footsteps of many great strikers, but it has been decades since the Gunners had a prolific number nine.

John Radford (149 goals), Ted Drake (139), Reg Lewis (118), Alan Smith (115) and Frank Stapleton (100) are among the No9s with a longstanding place in the club’s record books, but in more recent times Thierry Henry, Robin van Persie and Dennis Bergkamp wore different numbers.

Lacazette has made a promising start, with four goals in his opening six Premier League games, but then the bar has been set at a modest level: few have passed through the club with distinction since Arsene Wenger took charge in 1996. In fact, only twice has the incumbent reached double figures for League goals in a single campaign: Lukas Podolski (11 in 33 appearances) during the 2012-13 season and Nicolas Anelka (17 in 35) way back in 1998-99. The shirt has even been vacant for three seasons, in 2015-16, 2010-11 and 2000-01.

The full list of Lacazette’s 10 predecessors is not so much a ‘who’s who’ as a ‘why and how?’ - in many cases an indictment of Arsenal’s mixed success in the transfer market.

Lucas Perez did little wrong but had precious few opportunities following his £17m arrival from Deportivo La Coruna last year.

Seven goals from 21 appearances is a respectable return, given sporadic involvement, especially because just nine of those outings were starts, but Wenger turned down an opportunity to sign him earlier that summer and the Spaniard was never truly able to answer his manager’s doubts.

Podolski began his Arsenal career in promising fashion but gradually lost his way and grew frustrated at a reluctance from Wenger to play him a) for 90 minutes and b) in a centre- forward position.

Park Chu-Young ditched advanced negotiations with Lille to join Arsenal from Monaco in 2011, but despite arriving as one of Asia’s top goalscorers, he left the answer to an obscure and unflattering quiz question: which Arsenal No9 played only seven minutes of Premier League football?

Eduardo da Silva’s attempts to define the number on his own terms effectively ended on February 23, 2008, with a horrific leg break sustained at Birmingham City. He had originally taken over from Julio Baptista who, perhaps underlining Wenger’s indifference to the significance of the number nine shirt, received that status despite arriving as a season-long loanee from Real Madrid.

Jose Antonio Reyes moved in the opposite direction after struggling to fully convince, despite making seven league starts during the second half of the club’s famous Invincibles campaign following his arrival at the club in January 2004.

He is perhaps most remembered for being on the receiving end of targeted hostility from Manchester United on more than one occasion (particularly at Old Trafford in October 2004, as the Invincibles’ 49-game unbeaten run came to an end), but also for his red card in the 2005 FA Cup Final, becoming then only the second player in history to suffer such a fate.

A new six-year contract followed but he would push for a move just 12 months later after being omitted from the 2006 Champions League Final team beaten by Barcelona.

Francis Jeffers arrived at Arsenal with the sobriquet ‘fox in the box’ but left as simply a ‘flop’ after failing to justify a fee rising to £10m, particularly lavish by 2001 standards. By contrast, Davor Suker was a bargain at £3.5m just one year after his Golden Boot-winning displays for Croatia at the 1998 World Cup.

He performed well as Arsenal reached the Uefa Cup Final in 2000 but he was already in the twilight of his career and soon became marginalised, chiefly because Henry was showing signs of developing into the Premier League icon he would later become.

Nicolas Anelka took the No9 shirt from Paul Merson and was an unqualified success, arriving as a £500,000 snip but leaving for Real Madrid after just two seasons, one of which included the 1998 Double.

Years later, Anelka revealed his decision to depart was because of a frustration that he was not seen by many Arsenal supporters as worthy to replace the legends that had gone before, specifically Ian Wright in his case.

You suspect Lacazette will have no such concerns.