Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is still a legend in my eyes and nothing will change that, but in my opinion, since he signed his contract extension there has been something missing!
I absolutely love him as a player and a person and let me make it clear, THAT WILL NEVER CHANGE! I am so happy he has signed and is staying with us; it is such a statement that we have managed to keep him.
Since his announcement something has been missing though, and of course I don’t blame him one little bit because if he is not being fed then there is only so much he can do. He is human at the end of the day but you can’t help but think that if he was in the position Lacazette was with those chances then he would have netted them and we could have even won the game.
I still do not agree with Arteta’s decision not to play him in a central role. I would love to see him deployed in the centre and I am not saying he would run riot, but a player of his quality needs to be deployed in the centre with Lacazette and Willian/Saka/Pepe on either side of him.
Arteta has the talent in the team to be able to try things out and I can’t help but feel that teams are slowly analysing him and his tactics, and if they work it out then it will be dangerous for us in the long run!
I have no doubt that Arteta will pick the boys up and dust them off moving forward, and I hope whatever is distracting Aubameyang quickly disappears because we need our top guy firing, because when he is not in the game mentally and physically, everyone else seems to switch off too! Gooners?
Shenel
I too would like to know how many goals Aubemayang has scored for us playing in the middle and how many from the wings. Are Lacazette and Nketiah that good to justify playing Aubameyang in the wing? Have they done enough for Arteta to insist on playing our best striker out of position? It’s not like we have shortage of wingers. Willian, Pepe, Saka, Martinelli just to name a few.
With all that said I think your article is early by two years at least.
I dont think Auba is distracted. For a man who has given so much to Arsenal and who has the best goals tally ever since he has come in that is not a fair reflection to judge him by one game. It is just that Auba did not get enough service in the Liverpool game and he was man marked by the best team in England. Had he been in Laca’s place I am sure he would have scored but that is another thing. MA can try him in the CF position, but I doubt Auba likes that because his best performances have come as a winger.
Auba’s brother has come out to say it several times that Auba’s preferred position is in the middle. I think at this point Arteta needs to try him in the middle, we have a 31 year old on the left wing and a 32 year old on the right wing, they can’t be as fast as their prime years and can’t be running all the time. Auba is similar to Lewandoski in that he’s a natural goal poacher. Lewandoski will not do much on the pitch but he’ll score goals. It will be folly for bayern to play Lewandoski on the wings. I think we’re becoming too predictable. Everyone knows we’re going to try to pass the ball to Auba on the wings. They stop him before it happens.
I feel in his last game, in the first half, Auba wasn’t pressing as he used to, maybe this was a tactic by Arteta to conserve his energy till the second half and maybe that was why he played elneny with xhaka too hoping we would draw them in the first half and play our usual game in the second half with the introduction of ceballos but it backfired, we conceded earlier than Arteta expected. Klopp figured the tactic out and used long balls to salah where AMN and xhaka were doing very little to protect Tierney. The players didn’t exactly play according to script on this one. Had Laca put his chances away in the second half, It would have been a different story entirely. We wouldn’t even remember the first half.
Did you saw Xhaka point arm to remind KT of salah run, in l!’pool 1st goal? And still he misjudged his run.
Let’s not point accusing fingers at the wrong ppl, a lot of things went wrong, and the better team and better tactic won. The defeat was as a result of poor judgement, attack inefficiency and Liverpool supremacy.
First goal, I blame KT and Leno,
2nd goal was all willian
3rd goal was Leno inability to communicate his defender, catch the ball and restart the game .
I think our midfield did OK, despite having lesser quality compared to opposition
I see nothing missing with King Auba. It is the midfield that is rather missing steel and creativity. That makes it easier for good defenders to mark him out from games because a creative midfield is able to create spaces to cause a lot of off ball situations for our intelligent goal scorer to capitalize on. Ceballos did perfectly well with creativity against Liverpool. Auba will score his goals with this squad but will set the season firing with a few quality additions to the midfield.
Nice one 👍
Sure Sue.
Nothing is wrong with AUBA, he has always been like that, he performs when the team perform and flop when the team flop. He isn’t the kind of guy that carries the whole team on. He isn’t like some magical player to stand out and bail out the team, with our current mf capacity, where we only created 24 chances in 3 games, it’s not surprising AUBA is isolated and not performing well.
I think lacca usage is overestimated. He used to track, and mark from the front but now he isn’t doing much and at d same time missing lots of opportunities, I’ll like to see willian AUBA pepe
Big ups on everything about Aubameyang – well spot on there.
On Pepe, I am so running out of patience with him. To me, he has everything – the moves and skills, but is way too fragile, seems to be uninterested too many times, and woeful severally with his decisions, and more sadly he ain’t even showing glimpses of improvements.
‘since he signed his contract ‘ you mean a whole two games lol
One he assisted , the other against the Champions
Nothing missing Auba apart from a team that can’t proivde. He says himself that he’d love to see Aouar play with him. Where is he?
City just spent 65 mil cauz they lost 5 to leicester.
I can’t even hope for a top 4 with this team, even with Arteta in charge.
This team though…
—————-Leno———————
—-Holding—Gabriel—-Tierney—–
HB———-Aouar——Ceballos——Saka
—-Pepe——————————-Willian
———————Auba——————–
‘since he signed his contract extension there has been something missing!’
Could this be the “Theo Walcott Syndrome”?
I’m sure people will remember the “Sign Da Ting” campaign (twice in fact) in as much as he played out of his skin both times during contract negotiations and was generally pretty crap afterwards.
I’m not making direct footballing comparisons (yet), but the are similarities in the way the situations both played out.
Time will tell.
And “Time” is precisely what YOU have NOT given him as yet. Such impatience based on one quiet game with little support against the worlds best opponent. HUGE OVEREACTION MY FRIEND!
Walcott was lazy for his entire decade plus at Arsenal and his caeer faded quickly into anonymity. Totally different from Auba.
I’m not criticising Auba at all John, but making the point of the similarities with the contract negotiations. He can have as much “Time” as he wishes and you obviously did not read the last paragraph of my comment.
Sorry, Jon not John
Auba is one of us and the best goal scorer in the squad. I wonder the number of goals he will get if he’s relived of his other duties and he’s to only focus on scoring like Lewa. He’s an amazing poacher nd with d right additions, he can only get better.
Personally, I don’t tink anything is missing, d guy is still hungry than ever and also fraustated when it doesn’t work out. #COYG
New season, potential league winners after Fulham and doom and gloom after West Ham and Liverpool followed by paragraph in the article on whether Auba is resting on his laurels
The transfer window is vital and until that is done and dusted and a few more games are played then a bit of calmness is required I feel
Yes Sue P calmness indeed. You and I as long time fans must surely both know that calmness is not given to many younger fans, some of whom despair at one defeat or predict a league title win after two wins. Such daft extremes INSTEAD of sober minded reality and sensible weighing up of the many plusses and minuses. Sigh!
Since the whole world knows that Aubameyang is a world-class center forward,
Why would the coach persist in playing him at wings???
Those are the bu****t tactics I keep talking about.
Arteta & Lampard are simply not up to standard. How Lampard excels is that Sarri set for him a good midfield base that can offset his bogus lineups.
But for Arteta there’s no room for trials. You lose if you make stupid decisions.
TBH he seems to be more of an inside left, like Henry often was.
@Herbz Auba has played from the left wing and been joint top scorer and one goal from joint top scorer the last two seasons.
What is wrong with that?
And during these two seasons other centerforwards in better teams has not scored more goals then Auba. This suggests that Auba in the center is not going to provide significantly more goals. And if we move Auba from the left we lose his 22 goals from that position. Who will score as much as Auba from the left?
I agree entirely, but we’re not Chelsea or Man City who can afford to play with two strikers because they have strong midfields.
Our boss has to choose one over another.
Nothing missing except defenses put the clamp on him. Other players up front do not threaten so coaches game planned against Auba.
@Icw Do you mean that Arteta is setting up Auba to fail? Or did I missunderstand you?
No sorry if I confused you. Artera has nothing to do with it. The opposing defenses are covering up the side where Auba is playing with 2 or 3 players taking away long balls and reducing the space where Auba plays.
@Icw Thank you for clarifying!
Auba cannot hold the ball against CBs and he is more effective against fullbacks than CBs, that’s why he plays on the wing. He is a much better version of Walcott in that respect. Mane and Salah play on the wings as well.
Regarding the contract: time will tell. Much too early for those speculations.
And like others have said, we need at least 1 very creative MF to help Auba get the ball more often.