Alexandre Lacazette signed for Arsenal yesterday from French club Lyon for a club record fee thought to be around £52m, a fee that eclipses the £42.5m we paid when we signed Mesut Ozil from Real Madrid (Spurs’ special partner) back in 2013 on deadline day.
Lacazette will now travel to Australia and China, for our summer tour, where we play Chelsea and Manchester City, along with local Chinese sides, and Sydney club sides in Australia and he should also feature in the prestigious Emirates Cup in August. With the nice and early nature of his signing, unusually for us, it means he will get a full pre-season with his team mates, and hit the ground running come the start of the season. This is in stark contrast to previous seasons, where we have been caught cold and left short for the opening game of the season *COUGH **LIVERPOOL.
His arrival comes on the back of a very fruitful career at Lyon, with 28 goals last season and 113 goals in all competitions for the French giants.
The Frenchman said on Arsenal.com:
“I am, of course, delighted and very proud, too, because Arsenal is a legendary club, throughout my childhood, thanks to Thierry Henry and other French players, I always dreamed of playing for this club so today that dream has been fulfilled. Arsenal’s past appeals to me – I like clubs with a history. Also, the fact that the manager has been here for a while shows that it is a stable club which I like. In addition, there are quite a few French players here, which makes it easier to settle in. In my opinion, Arsenal is also the club that plays the best football in England so I really wanted to come here…”
Then a journalist asked him about not being in the Champions League, at which point Arsene Wenger started playing a big bass drum before he could finish his question, and hurried Lacazette out of the room, weird.
