Alexandre Lacazette may not have scored in our Community Shield triumph over Chelsea, but he still made a big impact.
Starting his first match at Wembley, the France international linked up well with Danny Welbeck and Alex Iwobi in attack, and even curled a stunning strike off the woodwork.
Lacazette received a warm ovation when he was replaced by Olivier Giroud after 66 minutes, and Theo Walcott was impressed with our new striker’s performance.
“Hitting the post shows his quality,” he said. “When you give him time and space on the ball, he’s got quality and he showed that. The way he held the ball up too… Obviously the manager will be the best judge of his game, as I was too focused on what I could do to change the game when I came on.
“He’s a goalscorer and he’s going to score goals for this club. The number of key players we have in all sorts of positions, they’re going to supply for him and Oli as well. There’s loads of competition as well.”
Next up is our Leicester City on Friday night, and Walcott cannot wait to get our Premier League season underway.
“A night game might be better for us,” he said. “It’s a bit different, a bit new for us and our fans will be up for it. Home support is always crucial and that will be so key this season as the fans will just be behind the team from kick off all the way through.
“You’ve got to be patient sometimes with this formation that we’re playing, as we’re still learning to play a different style of football. We’re getting better and I think that showed today. We managed to stop Chelsea from playing the sort of football that they do, when they play out to the full backs.
“We stopped that very well because we worked on it. The Premier League’s back and that’s what we want to do, just play football. If you ask anyone on that bus now, they’ll tell you that they just want to play.”
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