Arsenal went with a lone striker, letting Alexandre Lacazette hold the role, and as is the case anytime you put faith in him, it paid off brilliantly.
It wasn’t the starting XI some may have been expecting for Arsenal. After playing so brilliantly in two consecutive matches with the 3-5-2 formation, Unai Emery did his usual thing and varied the form a bit, likely to not be anything close to predictable.
The result was a 3-4-2-1, with the hardest decision undoubtedly coming down to who to start as that loan striker when both are on such level footing. But for Emery, he chose Lacazette up top, leaving Aubameyang, a contender for the Golden Boot, on the bench. Naturally, there was some fuming on social media, but that fuming proved meaningless by the end of proceedings.
Because, when you get down to it, no faith placed in Alexandre Lacazette is ever going to be misplaced, or thrown away. The Frenchman is too much of a competitor; he’s got too much skill. It’s not in his nature to disappoint and, in the rare occasion that he does, it comes back tenfold not long down the road.
We saw that against Newcastle. Given sole striker duties up top by himself, Lacazette was never not in control. He did so much off the ball, giving Newcastle defenders so much to think about.
It only made sense that, when it came down to a big opportunity to put the game away, he took it, lofting a ball beautifully over Dubravka into the back of the net from an assisting header from who else but Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, new to the game and hungrier because of it.
It’s really a flawless decision-point at this juncture, because no matter how you align the strikers, who you start or sit and what formation you use, eventually they are both going to get into the game and they both bring so much that the game changes immediately upon any introductions. So while Emery deserves credit for varying things, there is no wrong way to align.