Arsene Wenger has hailed record signing Alexander Lacazette after his brace beat a dogged West Brom at the Emirates on Monday evening.

The Frenchman who cost £53 million from Lyon this summer scored with a header following an Alexis Sanchez free-kick flying over the wall and Ben Foster to strike the bar as the 26-year-old pounced to put the Gunners 1-0 up.

He then coolly slotted home a second half penalty after Aaron Ramsey was barged in the box by Allan Nyrom.

Speaking after the game Wenger praised his forward saying: “Lacazette is not just a goal scorer his link-up play is good.

“He fights, he is not phased by physical challenges that West Brom gave us today and overall he looks like he’s settled very quickly and very well.

“I took him off [when he was on a hattrick] because he was tired.

“He had an opportunity to score a hattrick but overall what you want is to win the game and not to take a gamble.

“Because if they come back to 2-1 [it could be a problem].

“They were very good on set-pieces and when you have a big guy like Olivier Giroud on the bench and you know that we might have to defend on set piece.

“I observed him [Lacazette] a little bit and he works on penalties in training. He took his penalty well tonight.”

Arsenal travel to Belarus to play BATE Borisov on Thursday in the Europa League.