We are now just one week away from the restart of the 2019/20 Premier League season, and we are still nowhere near knowing whether the Arsenal captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will be still with us for the start of the following season.
The Gabon hitman was made Arsenal’s first captain after Granit Xhaka was stripped of the armband by Unai Emery after his infamous attack on the fans way back in November, and Mikel Arteta chose to keep Aubameyang as his leader after he re-joined the club.
But with all the uncertainty of whether our leading striker will be agreeing a new contract, it is being suggested by the Gunners legend Martin Keown that Arteta should appoint another captain until until his future has been settled. He told talkSPORT: “I think the message needs to be to the player, ‘Look, we can’t have you captaining the club if there’s uncertainty around your contract’, in the last year of his contract, that can’t be allowed to happen.”
To be honest I’m not too sure why Keown thinks that this should be a problem, as we were in the same position when Aubameyang was made captain in the first place. And it’s not as if we haven’t had captains before that have forced moves away during the close season.
There was Koscielny as leader last season and we know how that ended. We’ve had Cesc Fabregas who was captain for 3 years before forcing a return to Barcelona. Not to mention the one year that Robin Van Persie was our leader before following the little boy in him to Man United. After him we had Vermaelen, Arteta and Mertesacker, who were all long term injury problems during their captaincies and hardly played on the pitch.
So, do you think it is such a big thing to have Aubameyang in charge? I don’t see any point in upsetting him needlessly right now, can you?