It remains perhaps the pivotal moment of Mikel Arteta's Arsenal tenure. A moment of truly significant pain in the short term, one he believed would pay off in the months that followed.
For now at least he is vindicated. In January Arsenal paid their club captain and best goalscorer to go and play somewhere else, a decision that in retrospect might have robbed them of the three or four goals that might have swung the top four race in their favor. But when Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang reunites with his former club wearing the blue of Chelsea on Sunday there will be precious few regrets at the decision to let him go to Barcelona on Sunday.
Arsenal, top of the Premier League and 10 points clear of their London rivals, have proven a great deal about themselves already this season. Aubameyang, meanwhile, has a lot more left to show. Five games into his time at Chelsea it appeared he had hit the ground running.
After three goals in those opening games he has not scored since and, unlike his counterpart in Arsenal red Gabriel Jesus, when he does not find the net one can find oneself wondering what else this No.9 really brings to the team. In the era of the do it all striker, is it too much to carry a pure scorer who does not find the net?
Golazo Starting XI Newsletter
Get your Soccer Fix from Around the Globe
Your ultimate guide to the Beautiful Game as our experts take you beyond the pitch and around the globe with news that matters.
Thanks for signing up!
Keep an eye on your inbox.
Sorry!
There was an error processing your subscription.
Aubameyang's ugly Arsenal exit
On the field there are precious few questions about what has changed for Arsenal without Aubameyang. Their front three of Jesus, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli is, as the latter noted this week, defined by its movement and versatility. At any time any player can fill the role of center forward or winger, that is unless Granit Xhaka is doing them already. Off the field, however, it is tempting to wonder whether Arsenal have lost something more intangible -- a spark of unfiltered personality to delight supporters -- without Aubameyang.
Undoubtedly, stripping Aubameyang of the captaincy and the rigid response that followed, eventually backed by those above him, was the moment that Arteta truly stamped his authority on Arsenal. As Mohamed Elneny noted, the club has been brought closer "because now everyone is scared!"
"Everyone is scared with their position because this happened to Aubameyang. Of course if anyone is not the captain of the team, does a small mistake, they are going to have the same problem, and no one needs that problem."
CBS Sports has a brand new daily soccer podcast, covering everything you need to know about the beautiful game. Make sure to give House of Champions a follow for coverage of the biggest games, stories, transfer news with Fabrizio Romano, and everything else going on in the world's most popular sport.
Certainly they know who would emerge victorious from any power play. Though the Arsenal armband may have sat awkwardly on Aubameyang he remained a popular figure in the London Colney dressing room even after Arteta had exiled him from the first team, a move that drew chagrin from those more senior than the manager as well as his players. From the moment many of the starlets that now make up the Gunners' core moved up to the first team they found a welcoming presence in Aubameyang.
On the summer tour of America in 2019 staff and teammates raved about the mentoring role Aubameyang was playing with the likes of Eddie Nketiah, Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe. The then-vice captain went above and beyond what might be expected to make the young guns feel at home, accompanying them to media events and taking the time to offer advice on the training ground. He may have been ill suited for the ambassadorial roles that would come with the club captaincy, but the dressing room tended to be a brighter place for having Aubameyang in it.
Still memories of their time together will have been somewhat soured by revelations that have emerged since. A video of Aubameyang slamming Arteta for his inability to handle "big characters or big players" emerged last month. The player quickly responded, noting that the interview had been recorded soon after his move to Barcelona and that he "still had a lot of bad feelings in me." Said in the heat of the moment or not, the implication of those comments were clear. Those who had been left behind -- and are now spurring the most impressive start to the season this club has had in the Premier League era -- are not big players.
Even before that emerged, there were those within the Arsenal squad who felt disappointed to say the least with Aubameyang's conduct, according to club sources, as it was recorded by Amazon's All or Nothing cameras in the documentary series that aired at the start of this season. Having reported back to training late after being granted permission to visit his mother in France, cameras caught the player laughing when asked about when he would return to the first team. It contrasted with the serious, meticulous approach Arteta was taking to the situation, as did his decision to fly out to Barcelona on transfer deadline day without the club's permission whilst technical director Edu and director of football operations Richard Garlick pushed to secure the deal.
A skeptical view might be that events were sculpted in Arsenal's favor in the edit booth. It should, however, be noted that Arteta's actions can be viewed as inflexible. The cameras do not hide away from the fact that the club hierarchy would not have been opposed to Aubameyang being reintegrated into the first team.
Mohamed Elneny is not one of those whose views were changed by the documentary, but then he had been in lockstep with his manager from the outset. "We agree with what Mikel decided because he is our boss, and we just have to agree what his vision is for [us]."
Asked whether the youth of the current dressing room means there are no outsized characters, Elneny added: "We don't allow big egos. This is the dressing room we have now. Everyone loves each other and everyone works for each other. This is what actually makes our squad really strong, because we don't have egos in the team."
Other managers, it should be noted, did not have quite the same issues with Aubameyang. The striker may have left Borussia Dortmund amid much tumult but Thomas Tuchel was so keen to reunite that Chelsea sanctioned his return at a time when they had private doubts over the future of the head coach. During their brief spell together Xavi praised the "gift from heaven" that Barcelona had been handed on a free.
Even at 33, Aubameyang can still score goals
Those egos can also make an almighty difference on the pitch. On occasion in the summer of 2020 it seemed that Aubameyang was going to carry Arsenal to FA Cup glory by force of will alone. That player might be gone now, perhaps never to return, but the case for the player's defense had rested on the striker continually being shunted into different roles as Arteta searched for a winning formula, one that strayed away from a 3-4-3 with Aubameyang on the inside left, a position from which he had caused devastation and carried Arsenal to the FA Cup Final. The narrative that Aubameyang had got the bag and given up never sat well with the sight of a player haring down the flank in pursuit of an overlapping full back. In La Liga he was free to be the scorer rather than create for others.
The same remains at Chelsea. "If Auba has something, it's the ability to put the ball in the back of the net and he's going to be doing that until the day that he decides he's had enough of football," notes Arteta.
For all the flexibility that Graham Potter has shown over his system he has largely used Aubameyang as a central striker (though he did switch to the left of a narrow front three against Dinamo Zagreb in midweek). In those early games it looked to be paying off, the No.9 applying instinctive penalty box finishes to moves in three straight games. When the chances do not come his way though, the stats line can look underwhelming indeed. Wednesday's win was the first time Aubameyang created more than one shooting chance for a team mate since coming to Chelsea and he averages fewer than one per 90 minutes.
Aubameyang attempts around 19 passes and 0.12 expected assists per 90. For Jesus those numbers are 26 and 0.16, he is about 25 percent more involved in everything that leads into the shots than his predecessor as Arsenal's undisputed number nine (Alexandre Lacazette was likely even more involved in build up but that was precisely the problem, he was never in a position to shoot).
When the goals come, the build up does not matter all that much but after 685 minutes, a small but not insignificant sample size, Aubameyang is averaging just 0.38 expected goals (xG) per 90 minutes, according to Wyscout. He is scoring at a commensurate rate; even at the peak of his powers the Gabon international's skills as a scorer were less to do with overperforming xG, more how his pace, instincts and eye for a loose ball allowed him to get up a high volume of shots. Even the shadow of his former self from last season registered 0.43 non-penalty xG per 90.
Wednesday's match had a few of the hallmarks of Aubameyang at his best for Arsenal, not least in the way he drove infield off the left flank before bending a shot at the far post from just around the 18 yard box. It is still something of his super power, the equivalent to a Damian Lillard deep three to ice a playoff series in so far as he is so much more accurate and deadly from there than shot value metrics would suggest he should be. On this occasion, however, the firmly struck effort came clattering back off the crossbar.
Maybe that is the most fundamental difference between the Aubameyang that Arsenal saw and the player they are to be reunited with on Sunday. For a glorious two and a half year period in red and white he caught fire, turning 38.5 non-penalty xG in the Premier League into 47 goals, so many of them the sort of outlandish finishes that he has not quite been able to replicate for Chelsea. There might have been a short term hit to come with letting him depart in such dramatic fashion but based on the player Aubameyang was then and appears to be now, it is fair to say that Arteta picked the right moment to part ways.
