Two up top makes Tottenham best option for French striking talent

While Arsenal have had the contentment of benefiting from goals off the likes of Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka, Sylvain Wiltord and currently Olivier Giroud, the only French striker that Tottenham can look back on is Louis Saha, who played less than a dozen games during a six-month stint at White Hart Lane.

It is certainly about time that Spurs jumped on the French attacking bandwagon that has served their north London neighbours so fruitfully in the past and the perfect opportunity may exist with Alexandre Lacazette.

Lacazette is having something of a breakout season at Lyon, with his nine goals in 18 league appearances already bettering the tallies of his previous two campaigns combined.

The big difference appears to be the switch from a wide forward to a central role, following Remi Garde’s decision to move from a single striker formation to playing two up top.

Henry is the obvious example of a player to have drastically progressed once being played through the middle and Lacazette has similar attributes in terms of his pure pace and ability to run at defenders.

No strangers to raiding France for younger talents, it is Arsenal that have been most heavily linked with Lacazette, but Lyon are not making it easy for their best players to depart, with Maxime Gonalons recently seeing the plug pulled on a move to Napoli at the last minute.

However, with Arsenal not playing two strikers and being unlikely to in the foreseeable future given the difficulty in incorporating Mesut Ozil into this formation, a move to the Emirates may not be ideal for Lacazette.

Instead, it is Tottenham of the big Premier League clubs that regularly adopt such a formation under Tim Sherwood and with Jermain Defoe sold to Toronto for £6m, there is space in the squad and money in the bank to sign Lacazette.

He could prove the ideal profiteer from Emmanuel Adebayor’s flick ons, Christian Eriksen’s passing ability and Aaron Lennon’s wide play and a January recruit would be a big boost to Tottenham’s top-four capabilities.

Tottenham’s odds are currently 7/2 to finish in the top four this season.