In their current guise, Arsenal look like a team destined to battle it out with the best in the world for years to come, but it hasn't been that way for very long.
In the latter years of Arsène Wenger's tenure, the Gunners struggled to maintain their place in the top four and looked a million miles off challenging for the Premier League or Champions League.
The north Londoners had a muddled squad and often made blunder after blunder in the transfer market, and while it was often the club or fans who felt burned by these moves, sometimes the players themselves were less than happy with the situation.
Lucas Perez's time at Arsenal
Yes, Lucas Perez, a player who left such a small mark on Arsenal's history that fans might be forgiven for forgetting that he even pulled on the famous red and white shirt in relatively recent memory.
The Gunners signed the Spanish striker in August 2016 for a fee of around £17m, and he was enthusiastically welcomed by Wenger, who said, "He's not only a goalscorer, he's a guy who combines well with partners, who can give a final ball and makes good runs. He's got a good eye for goal and had an outstanding season last year."
GK – Petr Cech
RB – Hector Bellerin
CB – Shkodran Mustafi
CB – Laurent Koscielny
LB – Nacho Monreal
DM- Francis Coquelin
DM – Santi Cazorla
LM – Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain
CAM – Mesut Ozil
RM – Theo Walcott
ST – Lucas Perez
While the fee wasn't massive, the fact he had scored 19 goals and provided 11 assists in 39 games the season prior left fans excited, although he would not hit such heights in north London.
The A Coruña-born forward would last just a season at the Emirates, in which he scored seven goals and provided five assists in 21 matches.
While that's an impressive return of 0.57 goal involvements per match, he was consistently picked behind Olivier Giroud and Alexis Sanchez, and injuries to his ankle and hamstring only made it harder for him to stake a claim in the first team.
Things came to a head in the summer of 2017 when the club broke their transfer record to sign Alexandre Lacazette and gave him the number nine shirt, which was the number Perez was wearing at the time.
Games
21
Starts
9
Minutes
948'
Goals
7
Assists
5
Minutes per Goal Involvement
79'
This perceived slight was clearly the last straw, and in a remarkable turn of events in July 2017, the Spaniard was quoted by his local newspaper La Voz De Galicia (later verified by ESPN), saying: "They [Arsenal] are not being fair with me. The act of taking away my [shirt] number without telling me anything to give to a teammate, that was the last straw for me.
"I feel like I was tricked. In February I was not allowed to leave for China but it was promised that I would be playing more and then I had even fewer opportunities. But the shirt number was an ugly gesture."
Unsurprisingly, his outburst quickly led to the Gunners sanctioning his departure, and he returned to Deportiva La Coruna on loan for the 2017/18 season, where he would score nine goals and provide eight assists in 37 games before he was finally sold on to West Ham United in August 2018.
In all, his one season at Arsenal was an abject failure for all involved and stands as one of the rare occasions in the club's recent history in which the transferred player themselves is the most vocal about how poorly a move has turned out.
How Lucas Perez fared after Arsenal
While the 5 foot 11 poacher enjoyed a fruitful season back in Spain in the 2017/18 season, his return to London a year later did not go quite as swimmingly.
In his one and only season in Claret and Blue, the then-29-year-old would play just 712 minutes of first-team football across 19 appearances – six starts – score six goals and fail to provide a single assist.
I
t was all a bit too similar to how his time had gone in the north of the capital, as despite a reasonably impressive return of a goal every 119 minutes, the Spaniard just couldn't nail down a place in the starting lineup.
Unsurprisingly, he was sold the following summer and joined Deportivo Alaves back in Spain, where he would spend two seasons, scoring 15 goals and providing nine assists in 70 games, with his most memorable moment being the goal he scored away at the Bernabeu which helped the team beat Real Madrid 2-1.
Following his two years in the Basque Country, the former Gunner opted to join Elche for the first half of the 2021/22 season, where he scored two goals and provided one assist in 19 appearances, before he then joined Andalusian outfit Cadiz in January 2022 for a calendar year, where he managed a slightly better return of eight goal and two assists in 33 games.
However, he had one more move left in him in December 2022.
Where Lucas Perez is now
It was announced in December 2022 that Perez would return to his boyhood club, Deportivo La Coruna, despite the team playing in Spain's third division.
However, what was even more remarkable about his decision to head back home was that it cost him a significant amount of money. With Depor down on their luck in the third tier, paying Cadiz the full amount for his services was out of the question, so Perez paid half his fee with his own money, about £435k.
Moreover, he has also taken a six-fold pay cut to play for the club, but that doesn't seem to be a problem, as following his first game for the side – in which he netted a brace – he said, "It was special I'm going back home, to the Riazor. What I liked the most was the atmosphere, it was incredible."
The hometown hero hasn't just been taking it easy either, as in his 46 games since rejoining the team, he has scored 18 goals and provided 21 assists, meaning he is averaging a goal involvement every 1.17 games, which has helped the team reach second place in the table this season.
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Ultimately, it might not have worked out for Perez in England, but he's been able to fasten an impressive career elsewhere, and his return to Depor is a genuine feel-good story in modern football.