Time to put Lacazette on the bench and start using Martinelli frequently. by Lagos Gooner
Aubameyang is serving a three match ban due to the red card he was issued against Palace. In his place, Arsenal used Martinelli against Sheffield United in a three man attack. The youngster shone brightest among the attackers who were used that day; Lacazette, unfortunately, did nothing special in that game.
Against Chelsea this Tuesday and in subsequent games that Auba will be missing, I want to suggest that we should use Martinelli as our top striker, in twin partnership with Pepe, in 4-4-2 formation. Lacazette, with all due respect and without trying to diminish his impact for Arsenal so far, should be rested for some games in order to enable him rest his mind and body, and prepare himself to re-launch his career whenever he is recalled to the team.
In football, form matters. If you are in form, you will get more playing chances than when you are off form. In recent games, Lacazette has not done anything to justify his continual first team opportunities. He has not scored a goal in over nine games and he has appeared frustrated in recent games. He has not scored an away goal for many, many months and our next three games are all on the road.
Martinelli on his part, has grabbed his opportunities, whenever he is called upon to play. In our last game, he scored the only goal we had in that match. He has been a phenomenon on the football pitch, in recent games.
At Arsenal right now, apart from our defensive issues, scoring has somewhat been difficult to come by. In games where we create several scoring opportunities, we end up converting just one or at most two out of those scoring opportunities. When we don’t score goals, we put serious pressures on the defenders, who will try not to concede the goal that will deny us of victory or even a draw, in a game. If scoring of goals was our problem, Lacazette has not grabbed the opportunity given to him to solve part of the problem. Martinelli on the other hand,seems ready to offer goals to the team, if asked to start.
This write up is not saying we should permanently keep Lacazette away from the first team; rather it is only suggesting that Lacazette should be rested until he is mentally ready to score goals again. We have quality attackers in Arsenal. We have Lacazette, we have Pepe, we have Nketiah and we have Martinelli. All these attackers can score beautiful goals on a good day but in recent times, Martinelli has been the player making things happen. Against Chelsea, I won’t be asking too much if I should plead with Arteta to allow this young and enterprising Brazilian lead the attack, would I? We are Arsenal and we are proud.
#keepthefaith
Sylvester Kwentua