Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s Gabon have failed to qualify for this summer’s African Cup of Nations finals after drawing 1-1 with Burundi in their final qualifier.
The Panthers, captained by the Arsenal man, needed to win in Bujumbura to leapfrog Burundi into second place in Group C but fell behind to Cedric Amissi’s volley with 14 minutes remaining.
The visitors got back on level terms thanks to an own goal six minutes later but couldn’t find the all-important winner.
Judging by the highlights the closest our man came to scoring was a tame stoppage time free-kick.
The point was enough for Burundi to qualify for the first time in their history.
While Gabon and Aubameyang will no doubt be gutted to miss out on the tournament in Egypt, it does mean our leading goalscorer will get a proper break and full pre-season.
We’re guessing that Auba will now make his way to Dubai to meet up with Unai Emery’s touring party.
This is good news for the club, most of our squad should get a full preseason. If we can move quickly on transfers everyone should be ready for the start of the season
Rest? Full pre-season? That’s crazy talk.
Transfers?
A full preseason can ruin a player completely. Look at Sanchez
You mention a lot of bridges that we haven’t come to yet. Shouldn’t we be concentrating on the rest of this season first? Surely, the priorities are keeping players injury free or back from injury asap (Ramsey and Sokratis are both injured currently) and concentrating 100% on getting a CL place and, possibly, winning the Europa League – and with the players we have as any transfers in the Summer won’t help us now.
Relax
Sorry, Aubameyang. You live to fight another day.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find Auba a kind of a weird player. The numbers don’t lie, he’s lethal. Still he misses many chances. And his all around play isn’t world class. But he isn’t just the pippo inzgaghi type fox in the box. I love him, just hard to categorize
Easy: He’s the player Theo Walcott spent large parts of his career imagining he was. Facetiousness aside, I think Aubameyang is a pretty rare style of player. He’s a fast guy who uses his speed to create space over short distances closer to goal rather than playing on the offside line so much. He’s brilliant at that, but not particularly great at finishing, so his ability to get himself chances still winds up being frustrating because he gets into such great spots and still biffs it at a rate that makes you wish it was Lacazette there. But Lacazette isn’t… Read more »
And the winner of the best overseas PL player is https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/47474106
Well done!!!
46% of the vote….
So the players without a full preseason will be Iwobi and Elneny (AFCON runs until July 19th), Torreira and Ospina (Copa America runs until July 7th). Xhaka and Leitchsteiner will play the Nations League finals but that only runs until June 9th. I’ve probably forgotten somebody. Fun times for LiverPoo anyway with their front 3 being African, African, South American, hopefully the league fixture list gives us our trip to Anfield as early as August.
You’re an overthinker right? 😀