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Thoughts on Aubameyang’s Career After Arsenal
Auba endured a tough time on his return to the Emirates
For those that don’t know, I’m a huge fan of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
I’ve written about him several times on the blog, ranging from when we were muddled up in his contract extension situation, to when he signed da ting and even wrote a piece on him when he was in Barcelona lighting up La Liga with goals from pillar to post.
In 163 appearances for Arsenal, with most of his starts predominantly on the left wing, the Gabonese superstar scored 92 goals and was odds on to hit a century for the club before things turned for the worse in the latter end of his career at Arsenal. Yes, things had really deteriorated between the former captain and his manager, or I dare say, the club at large, which saw him lose his captaincy. However, the sequence of events that saw the star forward move to Barcelona on a free transfer, yes, free transfer, was downright shambolic. If Arsenal had not signed Nicolas Pepe for £72m, Aubameyang would have remained the club’s record signing, and to see him leave for nothing left a lot to be desired. Firstly, there was the bit of the captain flying to Barcelona on his own when both parties had not reached an amiable conclusion, which speaks in volumes. Then there was the talk of how the deal was off because both clubs could not agree on terms, leaving the Gabonese forward red faced, then there were pictures of him already in training with the Catalan outfit, when the deal had not been made official.
From the best of my knowledge, it is believed that the forward and the club parted ways ‘by mutual consent’. This indicated that Aubameyang, so desperate to leave the club, parted ways with his fat pay check to join cash-strapped Barcelona for next to nothing, On one side of the divide, Arsenal was lauded for ‘conducting a smart piece of business’, saving themselves about £25m in wages that would have been holed up for the best part of 18 months on a player who’s future with the club was done. It takes us back to the very messy Mesut Ozil situation that saw the German maestro rot on the bench consistently, offering no value to a team that was clearly bereft of his creativity. Here with Aubameyang, Arsenal decided to cut ties with a striker that produced close to a century of goals, sticking with just Alexandre Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah that campaign, that struggled to score the goals required on a consistent basis.
Lacazette eventually lost his place to Nketiah, with the young forward scoring a couple of goals in the tail end of the campaign, but it was not enough to secure Champions League football, as the defeats to Newcastle and Tottenham put the final nails in the Champions League qualification coffin. To make things worse, Auba was having the time of his life with Barcelona, scoring 13 goals in 23 apps for the Catalan giants.
Arsenal moved on to secure the services of Gabriel Jesus last summer, while Barcelona got their long-term top target, Robert Lewandowski, who became a direct threat to Aubameyang’s place in the starting lineup. With Auba not wanting to play second fiddle to the Polish superstar, he moved to Chelsea, Arsenal’s London rivals, much to the chagrin of the North London faithful.
Unfortunately, his Chelsea career has not panned out as he would have hoped, and even though he has managed to score three goals for the club with one in the 2-1 win over Crystal Palace in October 2022, and two goals against AC Milan in the group stages of the Champions League, Aubameyang lost his place in the squad to Kai Havertz and has had to make do with paltry appearances from the bench, showing lack of desire and looking out of sorts every time he’s on the pitch.
Ahead of Arsenal’s clash against Chelsea on Tuesday, Mikel Arteta was hopeful that the fans would show some respect based on what he did for the club, especially the FA Cup win in 2020.
“Let’s say thank you, pay respect and gratitude for what he was. He was an incredible player for us, scored a lot of goals, he was our captain and he deserves that”
On the night, it was a different affair, as the home crowd booed Aubameyang, made things hostile for him and even jeered him when he unleashed his inner Romelu Lukaku with a bad first touch from a routine pass. Aubameyang endured a torrid time in his 45 minutes at the place he once called home, having only nine touches of the ball with four from kickoff. Lampard compounded his embarrassment, yanking him out at halftime for Havertz who was equally worse.
Arsenal legend, Ian Wright, felt embarrassed for Aubameyang, and Lampard refused to comment on his decision to axe him after the break, even though he didn’t need to explain in all honesty. The player himself, took to Instagram to voice his frustrations with what you’d probably call a cryptic message,
“You know sometimes, people forget what’s the real life and forget about how you can’t control what’s gonna happen”
Miss me with that B.S!!!
Aubameyang is a grown ass man that made his grown ass decisions and has to live with it. There were rules, he breached them and had to face the music. Maybe it could have been handled better by the player, his manager or the club, but Aubameyang was the one that ensured all bridges were going to be burned with the shenanigans he pulled to facilitate his move to Barcelona. Even after he found a new lease of life at Nou Camp, he had the option of staying behind to battle for a starting berth with Lewandowski, and with the Spanish giants in several competitions, Auba would have had his chance, but he chose to move to Chelsea and hasn’t done enough to prove he’s a first teamer there.
At 33, he’s approaching the twilight of his career and he will look back at the Coupe de la Ligue he won at St. Etienne, one German Cup and two German Super Cups with Dortmund and the FA Cup he absolutely delivered at Arsenal. With 304 goals in 606 games, Aubameyang has enjoyed a prolific scoring career, and it’s unfortunate that his swansong isn’t as he’d have hoped.
Sayonara.
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Aubameyang Scores a Hattrick for Barcelona – So What?
Aubameyang celebrates a goal for Barcelona
I was still on my blogging hiatus when Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang departed the club for Barcelona, which crowned what was a tumultuous January 2022 for everyone connected with Arsenal. With five games played in January, Arsenal scored only one goal, shockingly, in the New Year’s Day defeat to Manchester City, which turned out to be the only goal scored in the month. This was because the Gunners were goalless and absolutely toothless in the next four games, losing to Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup, before the double legged affair with Liverpool in the League Cup. Burnley finally decided to turn up for a football match and showed up at the Emirates, to share the spoils with Arsenal.
While all that crap was going on in the field of play, there were exciting links with Fiorentina’s hot forward, Dusan Vlahovic, and Arsenal fans remained hopeful the club would seal the deal for the Serb, bearing in mind that the ousted skipper, Pierre Emerick Aubameyang left the club to Cameroon to represent his nation in the Africa Cup of Nations – even though if that didn’t pan out well with his medical issues. Vlahovic ended up with Juventus, and of course, social media went haywire with the club’s failure to seal the move for what was a genuine target.
However, there were some outgoing moves in January – Sead Kolasinac got his contract terminated like Mesut Ozil, Skhodran Mustafi and Sokratis Papastathopoulos before him and joined Matteo Guendouzi and William Saliba in Arsenal’s new dumping ground, Olympique Marseille. Then Pablo Mari, still haunted with the memories of being destroyed by Romelu Lukaku in August 2021, crept out the backdoor to Udinese, thereby reducing the center back count at the club. Ainsley Maitland-Niles wasn’t getting the first team football he was hoping for following his engagement with Mikel Arteta, so it was no surprise when Jose Mourinho (meh!) came calling and the Englishman found himself playing right back in Rome. Some business was also conducted within the nation with Flo Balogun leaving to Middlesbrough on loan for some valuable game time in the lower divisions and not too surprising departure of Calum Chambers to join the project Steven G is spearheading at Aston Villa.
Which now brings me to the Mammoth (yup, clearly bigger than an elephant!) in the Room – Aubameyang! Yes, things had really deteriorated between the former captain and his manager, or I dare say, the club at large, which saw him lose his captaincy. However, the sequence of events that saw the star forward move to Barcelona on a free transfer, yes, free transfer, was downright shambolic. If Arsenal had not signed Nicolas Pepe for £72m, Aubameyang would have remained the club’s record signing, and to see him leave for nothing leaves a lot to be desired. Firstly, there was the bit of the captain flying to Barcelona on his own when both parties had not reached an amiable conclusion, which speaks in volumes. Then there was the talk of how the deal was off because both clubs could not agree on terms, leaving the Gabonese forward red faced, then there were pictures of him already in training with the Catalan outfit, when the deal had not been made official.
From the best of my knowledge, it is believed that the forward and the club parted ways ‘by mutual consent’. This indicates that Aubameyang, so desperate to leave the club, parted ways with his fat pay check to join cash-strapped Barcelona for next to nothing, On one side of the divide, Arsenal is being lauded for ‘conducting a smart piece of business’, saving themselves about £25m in wages that would have been holed up for the best part of 18 months on a player who’s future with the club was done. It takes us back to the very messy Mesut Ozil situation that saw the German maestro rot on the bench consistently, offering no value to a team that was clearly bereft of his creativity. Here with Aubameyang, we have decided to cut ties with a striker that produced close to a century of goals, sticking with just Alexandre Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah, that have just three, yes, three Premier League goals between them.
If we were to let Aubameyang go and got in some juicy forward from who the Hell knows where, I don’t think the narrative would be the same. It’s bad enough that you let yet another valuable player depart the club for free, putting him in the same class with Aaron Ramsey, Danny Welbeck, Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil.
Four games into his new fledgling career with the Catalan outfit, Aubameyang scores a hattrick against Valencia and Arsenal social media goes into overdrive with fingers pointed at the club for failing to get a replacement, with is culminated with the club’s current alpha male in attack, Alexandre Lacazette, continuing to struggle in front of goal. Last weekend, Arsenal looked to the exciting kids, Emile Smith-Rowe and Bukayo Saka to come with the goods against Brentford and the game before that, it was Gabriel that scored the solitary goal that earned three valuable points against fellow top four hopefuls, Wolves.
Seeing Aubameyang score at Barcelona, while Lacazette is still blanking at Arsenal is not a pleasurable sight, no doubt, but Lacazette dons the Famous Red and White while Aubameyang no longer does. Some folks will come up with statements like ‘Aubameyang was in poor form before leaving…’, but that takes nothing from the fact that he’s still one of the most lethal forwards in the game. Arsenal has just Lacazette and to a certain degree, Eddie Nketiah, to lead the line between now and May, and I’m certain that Arteta, Edu and the scouting team would do their bit this summer to help secure a new center forward (or two) that would lead the line for years to come – especially with Lacazette and Nketiah having one foot at the exit door.
We as fans need to shift our focus to what’s really important – which is qualifying for the UEFA Champions League for the first time in eons, rather than on whether Aubameyang scored x amount of goals at his new club. We will continue to show our support for the lads we have, rather than those that have left for pastures anew.
Always remember that soldiers come and go, but the barracks will always remain intact.
Sayonara
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Aubameyang Signs and Martinez Leaves to Aston Villa
The picture above shows Emiliano Martinez and club captain, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang sharing a moment in Wembley as they basked in the euphoria of the Arsenal’s 14th FA Cup victory. Martinez, despite being on the fringes for pretty much the entirety of his Arsenal career, did a pretty amazing job in the short duration he deputized as Bernd Leno’s replacement.
I had shared my thoughts on Martinez leaving but it’s something I can touch on again. It was evident that his performances at the end of the 2019/20 campaign had put the gaffer, Mikel Arteta, in some type of dilemma, but on the back of what was a very successful spell in the side, Martinez was not going to spend another season as a deputy, waiting to feature in only Europa League and Cup games. You could bet in the best online casinos on whether he was going to leave the clubs and the odds would have been low.
Prior to when the Aston Villa move was officially announced, Martinez took to Instagram to share an emotional message with the fans about how he had his struggles with us and how he’s leaving through the front door. That meant a lot because we know how irksome some departures can be, like in the Robin van Persie situation or more recently, a loved player like Alexis Sanchez. We also need to consider the financial aspect of this deal – if a Premier League club had offered 20 million quid for Martinez while Leno was still fit, we would have bitten their fingers, wrapped the Argentine goalie in plastic, added a fragile stamp on him and ensured he got to the new club unscathed.
Aston Villa on the other hand, have their goalkeeping issues to deal with, as star goalie from Burnley, Tom Heaton, suffered a long term injury, forcing the club to sign a 136-year-old goalie to hold the fort, and we all know how they leaked goals like baskets. Martinez is going to a club where he will be a nailed-on first choice goalkeeper, so it was a win-win situation for both player and club.
Speaking of win-win, Arsenal and its talisman, Aubameyang, finally reached an agreement that saw the star forward sign a three year contract with the club. When you consider how important Aubameyang is to this club and what he has achieved for us and with us in his stint, extending his contract was the best piece of business this summer. The forward had some nice words to say as well,
“Signing for this special club was never in doubt. “It’s thanks to our fans, my team-mates, my family and everybody at this club that I feel like I belong here. I believe in Arsenal. We can achieve big things together. We have something exciting here and I believe the best is to come for Arsenal.”
Since Aubameyang joined the club, he has been in very prolific form, despite the fact he’s been played out of position. A striker of his immense talent and ability would have grumbled for not featuring in his natural habitat but he considered the team first and has been putting a great shift on the left to allow his best mate, Alexandre Lacazette, and fledgling forward, Eddie Nketiah, flourish in attack.
The news of Aubameyang staying in the club for the foreseeable future is very welcome for everyone concerned with the club and we will be hoping he crowns it with a goal or two against West Ham at the home of football.
Sayonara
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