Pundit claims Arsenal have Aubameyang replacement ‘lined up’ already

Danny Mills has claimed that Arsenal will already have a replacement lined up for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang after allowing him to leave to join Barcelona.

The Gabon international hadn’t featured for the Gunners since being dropped by manager Mikel Arteta and being stripped of the captaincy in early December.

Auba was then allowed to leave early for the AFCON, where he ended up picking up Coronavirus before the tournament begun, and was then left behind while the rest of the senior side went to Dubai for a training camp.

It was no surprise to find that he was then allowed to leave to join Barcelona, although some may have been shocked that no player was brought in to replace him before the window closed, but Mills believes they were right to cut ties.

“Sometimes you have to cut your losses,” Mills told the Football Insider.

“He was clearly not going to play, there was clearly a big issue between the two so you either get rid of the player or you get rid of the manager. It’s much easier to get rid of the player.

“The wages that he was on, nobody was going to buy him. So you’ve got to cut your losses and run. There’s nothing you can do about that.

“Do they keep him there until the end of the season and pay him £350,000-a-week or do they get rid of him and pay £100,000-a-week. Neither are good options but moving him on is the lesser of two evils.

“Clearly he’s a powerful influence as well and is a distraction.

“The only concerning thing is Lacazette and Nketiah are out of contract and all of a sudden Arsenal could have no strikers come the summer.

“I’m assuming they’ve got something lined up.

“It doesn’t look like Lacazette or Nketiah are going to stay. That’s the only strange thing about the Aubameyang deal. Maybe you should give that to Lacazette.

“Or they’re going to give it to a replacement and they’ve already got that signing done for the summer.”

Interestingly, Alexander Isak was spotted in London over the weekend prior to the transfer window closing, although I haven’t heard anything to claim that he held talks with any clubs, but it would be extremely interesting if we had already made some inroads on his future signing.

Could we really have allowed Auba to leave, knowing that both Nketiah and Lacazette are likely leaving also, meaning we will have zero strikers once the season ends?

Patrick