If we rewind to the beginning of the summer and consider one of the moves that Arsenal were looking to make, Jamie Vardy could have joined the Gunners to provide a goal-scoring centre-forward option with Premier League experience. As we now know Arsene Wenger activated Vardy’s release clause and was looking to sign the Leicester City player for around £20 million. Vardy took his time to think about the offer while on international duty with England at Euro 2016 but ultimately decided to remain with Claudio Ranieri’s Foxes.
If that transfer had happened it is unlikely that the Arsenal boss would have made the move to sign Lucas Perez. As things have worked out Wenger clinched the deal to sign the Spanish striker and Perez made the move to North London from Deportivo La Coruna for a fee of around £17m in a deal that was closed very near to the deadline. At the time many were unsure what they could expect from the Spaniard but despite suffering from a nasty ankle injury after receiving a horror tackle against Reading in the EFL Cup the player has managed to make a pretty solid start to his Arsenal career.
Perez has a good goal scoring pedigree having scored 18 goals last season for Deportivo as impressively he scored a goal pretty much every other game. So far this year for Arsenal where he has hardly had a good run of games partly due to his injury and also because of the incredible form of Alexis Sanchez, Perez has scored 5 goals and added 2 assists in the only 8 games he has played in all competitions. Of course included in those 5 goals in his stunning hat-trick scored against Basel in the Champions League on Tuesday night. It is plain to see that the striker is a natural goal scorer and following his performance vs Basel, Arsene Wenger had this to say about his goal-scoring instincts to BT Sport when interviewed after the game as reported by ESPNFC:
“I think he took advantage of the fact that we created good chances. But he’s a goal scorer, you know. He scored over 20 goals in Spain, and that is never a coincidence,”
“So I think he has shown that tonight. that he has a good smell for the goal in the box.”
Perez certainly does seem to have that priceless knack of knowing where to be in the penalty box and he clearly knows how to finish. Many Arsenal fans will be starting to really appreciate Perez now and he is clearly making the possible acquisition of Jamie Vardy nothing but a distant memory. It will be very interesting to see if the Arsenal boss retains Lucas Perez in the starting line-up this weekend and plays him along with Alexis Sanchez against Stoke City. The two players worked so well together against Basel and Perez offers the versality of being very comfortable on the wing as he has played there a number of times in the past before settling as a striker. Theo Walcott has been in great form this season and was likely due to return to the starting XI this weekend for the Stoke match but Perez will have made Wenger’s decision a lot tougher after his hat-trick and we know how hard it is to justify dropping a player who is coming off a 3 goal performance.
No matter what happens with the team selection this weekend Lucas Perez looks like a surprisingly good signing and goes to show what a successful summer Arsenal had in the summer transfer window especially when you consider the other acquisitions of Granit Xhaka, Rob Holding and Shrokdan Mustafi. Arsenal certainly look to have the striker position covered these days and once Danny Welbeck comes back they will surely have the most quality and depth in that position of any Premier League club between Olivier Giroud, Alexis Sanchez and Lucas Perez and they may well have the strongest options as things stand.