I think Arteta is only doing it because we literally don’t have enough wide players without Saka, Martinelli, or ESR playing on the left (if a new CAM comes in).
Nevertheless, its completely ineffective and I don’t understand why we keep persisting with it. I’d honestly rather see Arteta just commit to playing only one of Auba/Laca no matter what, then use Nelson or even Balogun out wide rather than play them together.
I have very little faith that Auba at CF is going to rediscover his old form though. We really have never found a way for the attack as a whole to click with Auba CF and my suspicion is that the combination of age and frustration has caught up to him just enough that he’ll never go back to being the player he once was.
Arteta has badly mismanaged the situation but giving him the contract was a mistake. We’d be much better off right now if we weren’t on the hook for £40m in wages over the next two years and we could instead just be putting that money toward a different CF. I would give him away for free if another club was willing to take him off our hands and it meant we’d buy a new striker like Lautaro or Vlahovic.
If Auba played under a coach who didn’t have him chasing fullbacks he’d be a different player. Maybe not the guy he was 18 months ago, but not this shadow version we’re seeing. It’s absolutely criminal.
This is it exactly, at BVB he was playing left to accommodate Lewandowski perhaps the greatest traditional centre forward of this generation. Whereas we are shunting him out wide for the grown up version of Nketiah.
I swear if I have to sit through one more season of commentators and fans going on about how great Laca is at link up, tracking back, conversion rate etcetc I’m going to lose my fucking mind. I want to hear my CF being praised for being a clinical goal scorer and actually posing a fucking threat. Not going off on some tangent because we have some cunt who can’t run fast or score a lot of goals.
I think two things are happening at once here and the end result is a player who is a shadow of the guy we saw a year ago. I do mostly think it’s the tepid system and him continually being asked to play out wide that has halted him, but he does also look a step behind in terms of his conviction from where he was before. I’m not sure if it’s necessarily a physical decline but more of a mental one, and I’d assume that it mostly stems from the fact that he realizes not only is he playing in a team that creates nothing for him, but that he’s also no longer the focal point of the attack as he should be.
Absolutely correct. The frustrating thing is that you can coach a player on the decline so they can still be a contributor. You can’t exactly stop time from ticking away though. Arteta seems content to not coach Aubameyang in a way to mitigate the decline.
You could be right and it could be a mental issue, between the two that’s preferable but I wonder if it is indeed mental what is going to snap him out of it.
Playing out on the wing in an uninspiring team that struggles to create isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, just have to hope he kicks on come start of the season but wouldn’t surprise me if we’re multiple games in and it’s still the same.
Yeah I think the only thing that snaps him out of it would be for him to play up top for a side that can actually play to his strengths rather than making life as difficult as we possibly can for him. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to be happening as things currently stand.
I would imagine that a top striker like Aubameyang is used to being in a team with players that can provide him with plenty of chances but he just isn’t getting that here.
Also, it’s probably the first time in his career where he’s being played out of his preferred position.
What other manager in Europe would have a top level striker, who is one of the highest paid in the PL, played out wide?
He had problems last season with malaria but Arteta he doesn’t seem to know how to get the best out of him or be able to provide players of his quality to play with him.
It’s hard enough for supporters to watch this team under Arteta but playing under him must be even more difficult.
It’s crazy to think that we signed him to that contract and had absolutely no plan. Not a single idea of how to maximize his skills.
Think back to July 2020, we’ve won the FA Cup with Aubameyang dragging us over the line. That was the time to ditch Lacazette if there was a plan to go with Aubameyang or make the real tough decision and see what we could have gotten for Aubameyang in the market.
We managed, once again, to put ourselves in a situation where a big player is on a shit load of money and the coach either doesn’t want him or doesn’t know how to get the best out of him and all the while his skills are on the slide. There is absolutely a way to utilize a declining Aubameyang in attack. Leicester have managed to figure out how to mitigate Vardy’s decline. But Arteta is so petrified of looking like he made a mistake that he needs to be proven correct about the Aubameyang on the left formation. It’s so frustrating because everyone knows it’s not working. If we can see it, the player can see it.
