New year, same story in France.
Alexandre Lacazette scored yet another brace – his fourth brace in his last four league matches (!!!) – as Lyon burst its way to the top of the Ligue 1 table with a 3-0 win over Toulouse.
The 23-year-old has absolutely lit up Ligue 1 this season, now with 19 goals in 20 league games and 2o goals across 25 games in all competitions. With his unreal form, there have understandably been links with Liverpool and Manchester City among others.
One more time: Alexandre Lacazette has eight goals in his last four matches. EIGHT. IN FOUR. That’s unprecedented form. In fact, the only three other players to have four braces in a row in the top five European leagues over the last 10 years? Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, and Luis Suarez.
Since losing three of its first four matches of the season (all by a single goal), Lyon has burst forward with a 11-3-1 record to put them on top of the league. During that span, Lyon has won every single match in which Lacazette has scored, which is a lot of them. They’ve also massacred their way to a +26 goal differential, six better than anyone else.
A point back in the table is Marseille, with Saint-Etienne three points behind, and giants Paris Saint-Germain in fourth a full four points adrift.
With his pair today, Lacazette’s total of 19 goals is a whopping seven more than the next-highest scorer, Andres-Pierre Gignac of Marseille. Amazingly, he’s not all that Lyon has in front of goal. 21-year-old Nabil Fekir, who spent time in Lyon’s youth system before joining the senior team in 2011 as an 18-year-old, also has seven goals, which puts him tied for third among the league’s top scorers alongside the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
It’s unfortunate that Lyon fell in the Europa League qualifiers to Romanian side Astra Giurgiu in the beginning of the year when they were still figuring things out, because with form like this, we’d all likely get to see much more of this exciting team on a European stage.
Here’s his first goal from today’s win over Toulouse. Nothing flashy, but a neat, calm finish at the end of a good run, which is more than Manchester United can say about its game today.
