Can Arsenal really not do better than £34m West Ham target?

If it feels like they’ve been in this situation before, that’s because they have. Yep, Arsenal are, once again, on the hunt for a new striker.

Rumours linking the Gunners to a frontman have been cropping up since God was a boy. This off-season is no different and, as usual, the results have been somewhat underwhelming.

Jamie Vardy turned down the north London club early in the summer, opting instead to stay with defending champions Leicester. Spain’s Alvaro Morata is a long-known Arsenal target, but he appears to be returning to Real Madrid from Juventus.

The customary balloon-deflating signing has already arrived, in the form of Japanese youngster Takuma Asano, and now, to top it off, the Gunners are linked with a huge move for Alexandre Lacazette.

The Frenchman is reportedly a £34m target for Arsene Wenger this summer and it’s a rumour that leaves something to be desired in the excitement stakes.

Lacazette, after all, has been aggressively tracked by West Ham so far during the transfer window and scored just two goals in six games for Lyon during last season’s Champions League.

Although the 25-year-old striker is a 10-cap international for France, he hasn’t featured for his national team since November 2015, has scored just one goal and isn’t part of Les Blues’ Euro 2016 squad.

All in all, Lacazette is a player whose reputation seems to be on the slide, which is not the kind of player a club of Arsenal’s stature should be chasing.

That said, Lacazette’s scoring record in Ligue 1 is good, with two consecutive campaigns of 20 strikes or more to his name.

However, it certainly feels like the Gunners could be doing far better with their ambitions in the transfer market, especially for fees reported to be north of £30m.

Then again, should we even be surprised by that?

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.