Arsenal’s legends have made a habit of not always agreeing with the direction of the club, so to have Ian Wright endorse Lucas is kind of a big deal.
It’s been quite some time since an Arsenal great has come out and supported the dealings of the club (I’m not just referring to Paul Merson’s transfer grade). There has been a lot of negativity coming from earlier eras and, to their credit, most of that has happened with Vieira and whatnot is rather unfortunate and you can’t blame them for feeling so dejected at their treatment.
But sometimes it’s just nice to have a club legend come out and say something nice. It doesn’t happen enough these days.
Well, it did happen, and it came from the mouth of Ian Wright. With question marks surrounding Arsenal’s new striker Lucas Perez, Wright has come out with a semi-strong endorsement of the new man by comparing him to Watford’s Odion Ighalo.
“Look at Ighalo. Ighalo was the same. Hardly scored any goals where he came from. If he comes in and for this season he kicks on and scores 15-20 goals that will get him going. He will get chances in the Arsenal side,” he said via the Daily Star. He went on:
“Ighalo did it in the Watford team with all due respect. If he kicks on in the Arsenal team with the chances that they make, he could easily score 20 goals – continuously.”
The main problem with Lucas is exactly what Wright highlighted – we really don’t know what he could do. There is no track record to lean on and no history of goal scoring to smile at. He’s had one year of goal scoring at Deportivo and several years playing out wide.
More from Pain in the Arsenal
But when give the chance, he scored 17 goals, and to me, the most impressive part is still the eight assists and two created chances per game. That will go such a long way at an Arsenal club that thrives on linking up play and putting the ball on a silver platter.
With so many people clamoring for the ever-ambiguous ‘world class striker’ there were some disgruntled fans that saw Lucas as too big of a question mark. Fair play to them, he is indeed a question mark, but that doesn’t mean that he has no hope. There are so many reasons to believe in him and his ability to really latch on at the Emirates.
Maybe having Ian Wright come out and lay those reasons out for all to see will go a long way towards convincing those finicky supporters.
This article originally appeared on 
