Lacasse apart

Sometimes signings just don’t work out…

Cloe Lacasse left Arsenal last week for Utah Royals. This sale has been in the offing since the end of last season as Lacasse bids to retain her spot in the Canadian National Team. I believe that Arsenal wanted to get Mariona and Kafaji on board before fully sanctioning the sale. For the player and the club, the move just happened at the wrong time. As is public knowledge, Arsenal tried to prize Lacasse away from Benfica in January 2023.

At this point, Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema had both torn their ACLs and Arsenal were light in attack. But they couldn’t convince Benfica to sell, so they recalled Gio from loan and later added Jodie Taylor to the attack on a short term deal. Taylor was not bench fodder either, she started the majority of WSL games following her arrival due to Arsenal’s attacking shortage.

Arsenal had wanted Lacasse because she scans very, very closely to the qualities provided by Beth Mead. Having initially failed to sign Lacasse that winter, Arsenal had to rejig with either Victoria Pelova or Katie McCabe on the right wing. Arsenal saw Lacasse as something close to a seamless fit for Mead.

Eventually, Arsenal did do a deal for Lacasse in the summer of 2023. The unfortunate thing for her was that Beth Mead returned so strongly. Mead was back playing regularly just a few weeks into the season and didn’t suffer any significant complications. At the point that Arsenal bought Lacasse, nobody could know exactly how Mead’s recovery would go.

Though Beth is managing tendinitis, she has not suffered an injury that has kept her from the squad since her return. Vivianne Miedema’s recovery, for example, was more complicated and Leah Williamson had to manage an issue with her other knee shortly after her return. Mead made 16 WSL starts last season (her comeback occurred on MD3) and she averaged 0.78 goal contributions per 90.

That represents an excellent return for a player coming back from an ACL injury and I think a lot of supporters have become overly inured to Mead’s regular delivery of end-product. She is certainly a player that is heavily taken for granted in my view. All of that added up to provide a blocker to Lacasse.

Many supporters questioned why Lacasse did not get more opportunities on the left wing in place of Caitlin Foord. I have to say I did not think Lacasse impressed more than Foord in that position, though I understand the argument that she did not have the chance to string together the games to allow her to find some rhythm.

However, I think the fundamental issue is that Lacasse’s great strength is her pace in behind defences and Arsenal just don’t play many teams that allow for that kind of counterattacking approach. It is no coincidence that all three of her WSL goals came against maybe the only two teams in the division that play a high defensive line (Manchester United and Leicester City, though in fairness, her long range strike away at United had little to do with the height of the opponent’s defensive line).

The move to Arsenal helped Lacasse to establish herself in the Canadian National Team but having made her debut for her country at the age of 28, it stands to reason that she wants to squeeze every drop from that particular lemon and not find her international chances limited by a lack of game time. I view the Lacasse transfer as similar to the Amanda Ilestedt deal. Ilestedt was, in my opinion, a good, reliable short-term option to cover for Leah Williamson’s injury.

Mead and Williamson are so important to Arsenal that replacing them in any long-term sense would represent major upheaval and would require a significant investment. Ilestedt was a safe pair of hands who had played under Eidevall before and could plug in and play while Williamson recovered but, at the age of 30, she wasn’t intended to be a long-term future signing.

I think the intention was much the same for Lacasse and, when Arsenal wanted her in January 2023, they might have had a succession in mind that included a sort of handover between Lacasse and Gio. The best laid plans, eh? The issue was that by the time Lacasse arrived, Mead was well on the way back. In hindsight, it’s probably a deal that Arsenal shouldn’t have done but, as I said earlier, they couldn’t know that Mead would recover so strongly.

The player’s wishes to pursue more regular football probably coincided with Eidevall’s realisation that his attack needed something different. As I wrote last week, the recruitment of Mariona and Kafaji suggest he will prioritise greater trickery and elasticity of positioning as he seeks to prize open the WSL’s legion of low defensive blocks and in their short time together, Arsenal and Lacasse grew apart.

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We are in Washington DC this week for the second week of Arsenal’s tour of the capital. From Tuesday, i will have a daily tour diary over on Arseblog News. We will be getting some player access of some flavour for the Arsenal Women Arsecast while we are over there and will be in attendance for Jonas Eidevall’s pre Chelsea press conference too. I am hoping to do a little video content from the team’s open training session on Tuesday too, keep your eyes on Arseblog News during the week.