Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has become the 657th Arsenal player to praise the positive influence of new coach Mikel Arteta.
It’s not the first time the club captain has touched on the fact he and his teammates are feeling better about life since Unai ‘it’s not my fault’ Emery departed in December.
Following the lead of David Luiz, Hector Bellerin, Graham Dougan, Charlie George, the Compton brothers and the ghost of Ted Drake, Aubameyang said of Arteta:
“He’s doing very well. We are improving every day. We’re feeling much better than the beginning of the season.”
The Gabon international was speaking from Dubai where the lads have been training and playing hard (with camels) in the Winterlull sunshine.
“The trip is a good one for the spirit of the team. We’re feeling well and have great facilities. We try to improve every day.”
Aubameyang was also asked whether he fancied his chances of topping the Premier League’s scoring charts again this season. The striker shared the award with Liverpool duo Mo Salah and Sadio Mane last May and thinks he could do it again.
“Yes. Why not?” he said, “first of all I always say the most important is the team and our targets.
“Then if I can be top scorer it’s cool For the moment we try to get some wins and that’s the most important.”
Auba currently has 14 goals in the league to his name, three behind leader Jamie Vardy and two adrift of Sergio Aguero.
I beginning to think all of our footballer’s are robots that have had a software programme installed to repeat the same shallow, meaningless drivel above improving all the time and feeling better and doing well at every opportunity.
Just a need a software programme to actually win football matches now.
Robots were probably designed after Human beings.
It’s the media training. How to speak without saying anything etc
Yep it’s meaningless PR spin. I don’t even bother reading these interviews anymore – I just skip straight to the comments section.
I couldn’t disagree more, Auba seems like a nice bloke who cares about the team. He has an ego but so should any good striker. He may leave in the summer but that is because of where we are as a team and what we need rather than him. Best transfer Gazidas made
I am loving the renewed spirits and beliefs within the squad, but with 13 PL games remaining, what’s the win percentage that’ll make us fans have the believe going into the summer and next season. I say 8 wins….go
I will stick mi neck out and say 10 games…
13 games left? Still have to play Man City away, Spurs away, Wolves away, Liverpool and Leicester at home, and seeing how we performed at Burnley last week, I’d predict 7 wins, 3 draws, 3 defeats , which would be a alright return. If I’m reading the fixtures correctly, our next 3 league games are all home (because Man City away was postponed) against Newcastle, Everton, West Ham – that’s a doable 9 points.
I think your prediction is reasonable, but that’s 24 (PROJECTED) points + our current 31 = 55… A point total good for (in reverse order)… 8th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 9th, which I am fine with, but let’s be clear about our prospects in the league at this point.
I’d love for you to be right about nine points from our next three games, but that is really optimistic. Realistically I can only see us picking up four points from the next three games.
Who’s next on Queue ?
#staypositive
“Nice lady from cafeteria praises team spirit, says coffee is much better under the new management” – it does seem like someone has made some kind of “if you appear in an article saying how wonderful things are looking, you get to leave early on friday”. In the absence of actual football, it seems reasonable to push some “happy family” pictures and stories, I get it, but it does feel like it’s gone way overboard. We have had so many stories with essentially the same content for weeks now. I feel somewhat like a kid being told “we’ll be there… Read more »
Why does Lacazette always look like he’s got the hump?
Tip your waitress.
Top 4, FA Cup or Europa League.. we need at least one to restore our pride. Otherwise let’s stay out of Europe next season..
I understand the sentiment, but if we’re out of Europe and finish worse than last season we’re less attractive when we’re trying to compete for talent. Then we’re down to only money as incentive, and being out of Europe we’d have less of that.
I don’t see a scenario where being out of Europe helps us in any way at all. Finishing as close as possible to the CL places is very important for us.
Klopp and Liverpool was out of CL for one season, allowing him to imprint his style in the team with more coaching time and less matches. Maybe we can win with mediocre players like they did and develop our own stars.
If I’m not mistaken Chelski under Conte won the league the year they were out of Europe.
Arguably being out of Europe has helped Leicester and being in Europe has hindered Wolves. Wouldn’t be surprised if their league positions swapped if they hypothetically exchanged circumstances.
The main difference is most of those squads already had a lot of their players in place vs. us who are facing a fairly significant rebuild this summer- particularly as we’re about to lose our only world class player (Auba). MPLS is right – being out of Europe altogether will likely cost us another 30-40m in revenue which will come straight out of the transfer budget.
I don’t think it is that much for the Europa Cup of Champions Mickey Mouse Cup, actually.
I’ve seen several reports saying between prize money, ticket sales, tv revenue and commercial income (our sponsorships) we can expect to lose 35-40m gbp if we miss out. It’s non- trivial
I don’t get this. As a fan I like to watch as many games as possible in a season. Also it is not like Europa League affects our performances in the league because we mainly play our B team. Especially in the first half of the season. We have enough big squad.
It’s not so much about the starting 11. It’s that the prep time for your Sunday Premier League game – tactics, system, mentality etc, is cut down to two days. And your opposition will typically have had 7 days to prepare for you.
Plus the travel time and disruption – which typically does include first team players.
It’s great being positive but it’s a bit strange hearing all this from the players when we’re in 10th and our form is diabolical…
I’ve heard a lot of BS from fans criticising the players for “having a laugh” despite the poor form. Uh, think of what they’ve been through: terrible coach, big losses in key matches, worst season in many years for the club, and so forth. They may be 20 something millionaires playing a game, but it’s a game the generates enormous pressure to perform nonetheless. And there have been a lot of squad changes this season. So hols in the desert with some warm weather training could well sort out their nerves and help them bond as teammates. Proof will be… Read more »
Win the next three EPL games and then you can talk as much as you like lads…
I think that is the plan.
Just waiting for first player to face the press and say “No, I was much happier under Emery and hate going on holiday to the sun in a private jet. We enjoyed having teams scoring against us at will because it spread goodwill amongst lowly clubs in their battles against relegation. Arteta must go”
What does media expect a player to say?
“What does media expect a player to say?”
They don’t really care. They know it will be bland as bland can be and so, by now, should we all. They just play their little part in the symbiosis of football and media, which is then sold at great profit to football junkies everywhere.
Everyone has said the right thing in the press. Hope they perform well in the field as well.
Great you’re feeling better but maybe start scoring those goals again as well. Many times, Auba has been flagrant in missing opportunities when we needed him to put it to bed and establish some sort of psychological strangle hold over the opponents. That goes for the rest of the lot as well. I imagine there will be the usual trite moans about Laca. I’m not sure where he’s left his scoring boots but he looks a half second slow IMO pulling the trigger at the moment. BUT he delivers so much more for us upt op acting as a presence… Read more »
Right on schedule
Sell auba, sell laca. Sign santori!
Fekir perhaps sir?
Or maybe even Mahrez? We could’ve signed him, you know.
But again, this is something that the casual viewer SIMPLY DOESN’T GET
“This is something the casual viewer simply doesn’t get.”
I wish I was professional viewer like Santori
If we could play as well as we talk we’d be some team.
Just waiting for Djourou and Walcott to give their bland, vacuous thoughts before shouting “bingo”.
What position does that camel play?
Center Back I’d wager
He’d certainly hoof it out
Don’t they famously have toes rather than hooves?
Wonderful. Now start winning fucking games.
Seeing Arsenal players with a Camel always reminds me of Szczęsny and Wilshire .
He made similar comments when Emery came in, it would be nice to hear some of these players take some responsibility themselves.
I really miss Graham Dougan’s commentaries.
I would have hoped that the club might bring a former great like “The Doog” along on the trip to help boost morale.
Ziyech rumoured to Chelsea now for 38m. We could have bod for him last summer with Overmaars an ally and price likely mid 20m. The way we have gone about our business, the profile of players we have been bringing in, rookie manager, it will be another long while before we are contenders again as another season without CL compounded with exit of likely key players is going to hit us. There’s spending and there’s spending. Sanlehi appeared to do well with Pepe but the player has proven anything other than disappointing but the back loading between him and Saliba… Read more »
Ziyech is inconsistent, you will see it when he comes to the pl. One game great, 1 game pooor. 26 in prime with a fee like that says it all. Much rather have taken a gamble on pepe.
Inanimate carbon rod remaining unnervingly tight lipped through all this…
A few wins over the next month and all us fans will be even happier.
Also calling it now, Arsenal to defeat Liverpool in early May and end their unbeaten run.
The Liverpool fixture is sandwiched between the 2 Champions League and 2 Europa League Semi Final dates, so we could very well see mix and match line-ups from either team.
We would all like to see that. But the only thing we have in common with them is that we have both taken our form to a new level this season.
Let’s hope lacazette will get over both humps before the end of the season
(clarification: camel’s have humps and a “hump” in other terms suggests a dry spell or baron period or a state of flux)
A happy and contented team is a prerequisite, it’s about time we had harmony in the team
A lot of talking going on about feeling better during the break, and they’ll probably scrape a draw on Sunday