Lee Dixon says that staying on the bench for a few games might be good for underperforming Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
The Arsenal captain has been one of their worst players this season as he struggles to score goals for them.
Since he joined the club in 2018, this has been his most difficult spell in front of the goal and he will be hoping things get better for him when he starts playing for the club again.
He has been sidelined for Arsenal’s recent games with an injury, and in his absence, the Gunners arrested their slump to beat Chelsea 3-1.
The likes of Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe played important roles in that win, but Aubameyang will likely get back in the team when he is fully fit.
Dixon thinks that he might probably benefit from spending some time on the sidelines.
“Nobody is bigger than the club,” Dixon told Tuesday’s talkSPORT Breakfast. “And maybe Mikel Arteta might look at the game at the weekend and say, ‘we did create some chances, we did this’.
“It might just do him [Aubameyang] a bit of good to have a little step out of the team and just look from the sidelines.
“When you watch a game from the sidelines you can sometimes learn more than you do when you’re on the pitch.
“Your brain is so full of information when you’re playing; you don’t always see everything, you don’t always feel everything.
“Sometimes when you just step back and you sit on the bench for a bit and you look…
“He’s obviously a hugely talented footballer and we need his goals, but it might be a time for him just to look and assess the team.
“You can actually see little ways of improving your own game when you’re sitting on the bench, because you’re watching other people and you’re seeing gaps appear from a different angle.
“You go, ‘I can make that run next week’, or, ‘I know how the full-back does this’.
“When I was playing I didn’t analyse Ian Wright’s runs because they just happened.
“But if you were sitting on the sidelines and watched Thierry Henry or Wrighty or Dennis Bergkamp, you saw an awful lot more and it gives you a bigger and more colourful picture of that player.
“So it might do him a bit of good to step out.
“If they win their next two games and he doesn’t play then he [could] come back firing. That rest might do him good.”