Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has made a dazzling start to life as a Barcelona player.
After falling out with Mikel Arteta, he joined the Catalans on a free transfer on deadline day in January.
He has since become an important member of Xavi Hernandez’s team and he scored a hat-trick for them over the weekend.
While he netted three times, Arsenal has struggled to score too many goals in recent matches.
The Gunners could do with some of those goals, and some fans believe the club made a mistake to allow him to leave.
One of them is Piers Morgan (The Mirror), but former Arsenal man, Kevin Campbell, insists the club offloaded him at the right time.
He tells Football Insider: “Look, we know what Aubameyang can do. I’m not surprised he’s hit the ground running at Barcelona.
“The fact of the matter is, he wasn’t doing it at Arsenal. The more he played, the worse he got. It just wasn’t happening. He fell out with the manager for whatever reason.
“Aubameyang can produce that. I can only wish him well. He can score goals and he is a top striker but his time at Arsenal had come to an end.
“We have moved on and we haven’t looked too bad without it.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
We all know that Auba is a top striker, and we enjoyed his talents when he was at the club.
However, the Gabon star rarely performed well in the final months of his stay.
We did the right thing to move him on. Now is the time to find a solid replacement for him.
far from a “free” transfer, well at least not for us
We’re still saving massively from his departure, the fact so much has been said about his falling out with Arteta. Let’s not forget his form fell off the edge of a cliff after he pocketed his 350k a week. Well before any fall outs, his attitude and performances got worse after the big money come in.
Auba was great for us in the first half of his time with us. He obviously became dissolussioned with the fact he was playing his last few seasons as a pro without top competition. I can sympathize with that, but the way he behaved during COVID, his tardiness as Captain and the way he essentially downed tools was completely unacceptable. For that reason I think it was best for both parties that we parted.
I wish Auba all the best cause I love the guy he will be missed at the club and we all know he still loves the club. Hopefully he can still keep kicking it at Barca
you never cease to amaze James and not in a good way…how could someone spend so much time pontificating about the supposed nuanced components of this debate, yet completely skip over the most prominent reason behind his statistical drop-off, that being the negative tactics on offer under our present manager…I wish I could say I was surprised by this clearly intentional omission, but it’s clear that the Kool-Aid has clouded your mind
So you are saying that Auba wasn’t a good enough footballer to adapt to a slightly different way of playing?
Maybe the tactics affected his ability to score as many as he had done in previous seasons but you must have noticed that he had dropped his level more than just that part of his game
Arteta felt the need to focus on getting our defence right first, we were shipping too many goals
He then backed his young attacking players who were coming through nicely or he brought in but they needed help from Auba and Laca to succeed
Laca has adapted, Auba was given the Captaincy to help him help them but I think he was too used to having the other members of the team help him and didn’t seem able to turn that around
His consistency was affected, but he still had good moments, I thought he was outstanding against Spurs this season for example, but the longer it went on the more affected he became, in the end not only missing good chances himself but actually getting in the way of team mates, chances were still there to be taken despite Arteta playing a more pragmatic game than we had seen before, there were just a few less chances than before
I can’t agree with Super Kev about the timing, I was hoping Auba would come back from AFCON, get back in the side, score us some goals and help us get Top 4 but he wasn’t really part of the future, a new team is forming and he was on the bus until he got off leaving us trying to find a replacement in the summer that will be chosen based on the way we now play and therefore will be on board with that way immediately, will they be as good as Auba was, who knows
Down the road Kane was thriving under Poch but adapted to Mourinho’s style when he went and now seems to be trying to do that with Conte, who’s approach is probably different again, Auba didn’t seem able to change and that’s a bit of a shame really
why would I possibly take someone who’s constantly espousing their utmost admiration for our current manager seriously when it comes to such a debate…surely you can’t believe that what you’re offering up is an unbias take?? it’s obvious that you see everything on a purely surface level, so whenever the discussion extends beyond this most simplistic of parameters you have a tendency to resort to old timey comments and comparisons that add nothing to the conversation…maybe instead of leaning into you’re preferred narrative take a step back and think about what you’ve actually witnessed on the pitch since Auba re-upped, from the Striker position, regardless of who was selected, then have a bit of a rethink