Former Arsenal striker Lucas Perez has revealed that he felt proud when Arsenal spent £18m to bring him to the Emirates Stadium from Deportivo La Coruna back in 2016. The Premier League side were impressed with Perez as he had scored 33 goals and racked up 22 assists in 96 games across all competitions for Deportivo.
However, the Spanish attacker made just 21 appearances overall during his two years with Arsenal. He managed to score just seven goals and notched up five assists during his Arsenal career, a record which most strikers would be pleased with.
Although most fans believed that Perez had a rather underwhelming spell in North London, the player has insisted that he felt grateful when Arsenal decided to splash the cash on him. Under Arsene Wenger’s final few years in charge, the Frenchman was slammed for lack of signings and at times, bringing misfits at the club.
While many Arsenal supporters might have felt that Perez’s arrival at the club was just another lavish, wasteful signing that the club made, the player thought differently. In a recent interview with La Voz de Galicia, Lucas Perez highlighted that Arsenal were right to pay what they did despite the signing not working out to be one that yielded maximum value.
He said that he was proud of the transfer fees that Arsenal paid and was glad that the club put their trust in him, “I can tell you that I am proud that many clubs have paid for me. And I will always be grateful to each of them who have put their trust in me. There is a lot of talk about Arsenal, but if Arsenal paid €21 million at the time, it is because I played and grew up in other clubs.”
Perez joined Arsenal in 2016 and was loaned out back to Deportivo in 2017 on a season-long deal for regular football. The Spaniard also won the FA Cup with Arsenal in 2017. He then left Arsenal on a permanent deal in 2018 to join West Ham United.
Lucas Perez returned to La Liga in 2019, joining Alaves for two seasons before making the switch to Elche before the current campaign began.
