No Lac of goals as PSG are thumped
are stronger than in France.” In January, Wenger said those defenders and the fact there was no winter break made life hard for Lacazette in his first season and pointed to Alvaro Morata’s struggles at Chelsea.
Morata has since revealed that he changed his hair, his car and his boots to try to break his bad spell but Lacazette stuck to more standard practices. He added: “Arsene talked to me ALEXANDRE Lacazette was broken-hearted when Didier Deschamps left him out of his France squad for the World Cup. And when his team-mates went on to win the tournament last month, he could be forgiven for being angry and jealous as well as overjoyed that his nation had triumphed. But he insists any negative feelings were soon overtaken by the pride that his mates had become world champions. He said: “I am still happy because it’s my country. At first I was disappointed not to be in the team, but one month later I had forgotten this and I was happy for my friends. When you know you will not be part of the adventure, you just have to be with them.” a lot, I watched videos, I trained more. Sometimes you can do everything but it’s only about a little bit of luck.
“I know it was my first season so I can’t be too hard on myself, even if I wanted to score more.
“I don’t care how people judge me, I know if I stay at Arsenal the club are happy and my team-mates as well. This is the most important thing.” UNAI EMERY warned Mesut Ozil and his fellow Arsenal stars they must work harder to win the ball back. The Gunners ran out comfortable winners against an understrength Paris Saint-germain side here in the National Stadium. Ozil captained the Premier League outfit to end a difficult week – when he retired from international football – on a positive note, scoring the first goal. Alex Lacazette, twice, and fellow substitutes Rob Holding and Eddie Nketiah were also on the scoresheet after Christopher Nkunku had levelled with a penalty. But Emery knows there is still plenty of work to be done. Not least in his side’s efforts to close down their opponents, something which, last night, did not impress him until he threw on his younger players midway through the second half. He said: “In the first half, we played good football with quality players but I wanted to do the pressing better. We had this pressing with the young players later. It was only the first match for Mesut, Mo Elneny and Alex Iwobi. We only did one day tactical session this week. We looked at videos for movement and positioning.”
Overall, though, Emery has been pleased with what he has seen in south-east Asia and he is getting closer to naming his five captains.
It is something which is quite common in his native Spain and he wants to introduce it to north London with Ozil, Petr Cech, Aaron Ramsey, Laurent Koscielny and two others under consideration.
Emery added: “We are giving responsibility to players.” He was particularly pleased with the performances of the younger members of his squad, not least with Emile Smith Rowe on his 18th birthday who produced an assist for Lacazette.
Smith Rowe scored in his first game of his first pre-season tour with the senior squad on Thursday, the 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid before the Gunners lost on penalties.
Emery said of his side’s performance: “We had in our mind for the team to improve tactically and also the pace we played at. The result was not the most important but it is good also knowing that I can play with young players. Our work over these two games has been very good.”
PSG boss Thomas Tuchel, meanwhile, reckons the fact Arsenal’s big players didn’t go to the World Cup or returned early gives them an adge.
He said: “It could give Arsenal a big advantage. When I managed Mainz in Germany, I always wanted to play the big teams early on after the European Championships or the World Cup.
“We would have had six weeks preseason and be raring to go.”