Is it time to take Aubameyang off taking penalties?

Should penalty taking duties be taken off Aubameyang for now? By Sylvester Kwentua

Hello again! Have you in recent weeks ever wondered if maybe Aubemeyang needed some time off from taking set piece duties, especially penalty kicks? Auba is a deadly striker who on a good day can finish off half of a chance, but it seems scoring penalties has not been one of his strong points lately as a striker at Arsenal. Or is it the pressure of leading Arsenal that is affecting his penalty taking technique?

Since he started playing for Arsenal, Auba has scored 9 out of 13 penalties for Arsenal in the league, and for a striker, this is not a bad record. But when you consider that he has failed to score in two back to back crucial penalty kicks for Arsenal; against Aston Villa and against Watford, then you may start to toy with the idea of probably taking away the responsibility from him till he gets his groove back. Scoring of penalties needs all the focus a player can get and at this period of his career, Auba seems to be struggling with getting back to his best, although he has scored a few goals already for Arsenal this season.

While he gets back to the Auba we have always known him for, who can shoulder the responsibility of taking penalty kicks for the meantime?

Welcome Lacazette! Yes, you read me right. Laca should be considered seriously to start taking up penalty duties for Arsenal.

I won’t be the first to mention that Laczette should be allowed to take up penalty duties for Arsenal, but I don’t mind lending my voice in supporting it. Somebody who has a record of only missing 5 penalties so far in his career, as against the 31 he has scored so far, should be the first choice penalty taker in any club.

Do you know that Laca has scored 8 out of 8 penalties for Arsenal so far? Strangely enough, Ben Foster, when he kept goal for West Brom, was the closest who has come to saving one of Laca’s penalties (which was his first one for Arsenal) and even then all he did was guess the right way.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not in any way trying to teach Arteta his job, I am only asking if he could look into these persistent calls for Lacazette to be allowed to take penalties. But judging by what Arteta told reporters after the Watford game, Aubameyang may just retain his penalty duties.

Asked if Aubameyang may now be taken off penalties going forward, Arteta replied: “He will stay on penalties if he is happy to do so.

“You will miss it if you take penalties, that is part of your career and the job and we will try to help him.” Do we agree with him?

We are Arsenal and proud.

Sylvester

Tags Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

14 Comments

  1. I think he’s learned from his mistakes. One more missed penalty will make him replaced by another Gunner

  2. 9/13 isn’t good. It’s 69%. The average penalty conversion for all players is 75%, so imagine being your teams go-to penalty shooter and being worse than average.

    Honestly if you are a team’s penalty shooter, you should be at 85%+.

    1. If every team had a penalty taker with an average success rate of over 85% then the overall average success would also be around that mark (allowing for cases where the usual taker is not in the pitch).

  3. Jorginho who used to be a very reliable penalty taker has lost 3 penalties for his country this year, the last one cost them an automatic qualification to the world cup, Fernandez lost against Aston villa where they could have drawn level, Messi who is the greatest player has lost more than 12 penalties in his career,last season 4 man city players lost penalties in the premier League. My point is penalty is a 50/50 game. Sometimes we should appreciate the keeper that saves penalty, I’m sure if that save was made by Ramsdale against Watford, we would all be talking about how good Ramsdale is, the two penalties that Auba has missed this season was saved by good keepers, yes auba should have scored but the keepers made a fantastic saves.

    1. 👍 And the goal Auba scored for Gabon last week was…… a penalty!!
      You win some, you lose some hey, Lenohappy!

    2. Except it isn’t a 50/50 game because a goalie has to guess right and there are atleast 5 different spots to shoot at. More like an 80/20 game.

  4. I think asking whether Auba should be replaced on penalty duty is pretty pertinent, and its something i asked myself after the Watford game.
    Its still a kind of speculation, but its certainly more relevant than unsubstantiated transfer rumours, or pieces about the players’ characters with no inside knowledge.

  5. I think it is worthy of a discussion to be honest, particularly going into a game at the weekend where we might only get an opportunity like a pen to come back south with a point or even three if we get lucky

    Possibly we as fans might be a bit more cheesed off if those two misses had cost us points, a bit like our 2 offside goals against Watford, we still won so OK, but I wonder what those penalty misses might do for Auba’s confidence, it may even affect team morale

    One of the problems we might have is that our two known and pretty successful penalty takers in Laca & Pepe are less likely to play a full 90 minutes than Auba at the moment

    I’m sure we are talking about and maybe working on this very subject at training sessions, we need a regular to step up, maybe Ben White?

    Is this something our new(ish) dead ball specialist would be involved in?

    The way we play these days, plus the VAR scrutiny I reckon our probability of getting a pen would have increased this season

  6. I think Auba should be given another chance and I am sure he will come good. All great players miss penalties in their careers and one should also appreciate good goalkeeping when a penalty is saved.

  7. I don’t to be honest Rashid80, I don’t remember Arteta being our regular penalty taker?, at 3-3 it sounds late in the game maybe our regular taker had gone off?, did Arteta miss the one before or the one after?, did Arsene and his coaching staff address it?

    That’s all I was trying to say earlier, I’m not having a pop at Auba in particular, but a penalty should remain as near as a gimme as you get in football and we aren’t exactly scoring for fun at the moment so I think it should at least be a conversation within the squad, practice, technique etc if Auba stays on it and scores great but there will be other times when he isn’t on the pitch and converting a pen might be crucial to a result

Comments are closed

Top Blog Sponsors