Mikel Arteta says Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang would benefit from his teammates hitting the net as it would ease the pressure on him to end his own goal drought.
The 31-year-old has played all but two minutes of the Gunners 11 Premier League games this season but hasn’t been anywhere near his clinical best.
To date, he’s scored only twice; on the opening day of the season against Fulham and the penalty that sealed a 1-0 win against Manchester United.
Arteta is obviously concerned about the situation which has laid bare his squad’s huge reliance on the captain to make match-winning contributions.
Speaking to Sky Sports ahead of Sunday’s match with Burnley, Arteta said: “Individually, we are doing a lot of work – to see where he [Auba] scores his goals, how he gets them provided, the areas he needs to attack and the type of finishes he is efficient with.
“But when you have a player in that type of spell, you need other players to step up for him. Then that process becomes much easier.
“The problem is when we have two, three or four players in the same way then it becomes unattainable.
“So you need someone in there to help him and someone there to step in and do the job for him. Then things come more naturally because the pressure is not as big.”
While easier said than done, Arteta also urged his striker not to overthink his current circumstances.
“Sometimes it is how much you think and with natural strikers, like Auba, it comes in a natural way,” he added.
“He doesn’t need to think, the action is there and he makes the choice in the right moment, with the right foot and plays the ball into where it needs to be.
“Sometimes when you are in this sort of spell, you overthink a little bit. So you have to let that flow go because in the end this is something he has done in his whole career.
“There is nothing we have to teach him to do differently to what he has done in the past.”
Writing in the club’s official matchday programme, Aubameyang revealed he’s leaving no stone unturned in his quest to rebuild his confidence.
“It’s been very frustrating for me lately,” he admits. “Of course, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what I can do better or how I can change the situation.
“I think a lot about how I recover between games and between training sessions. I look at what am I doing at home, am I sleeping enough, am I sleeping at the right times, do I need to sleep earlier or something like that.
“But I try to look at myself. It’s about what I can change on a daily basis and that’s it. Because I know when I’m on the pitch when I’m training, I’m training as I should be because I try always to work on my finishes.
“So it’s all about just trying to stay confident, don’t have doubts. Because I know I can do it. In my family, we don’t have doubts, even if we have difficult periods. This is part of life. You just have to face it, you have to face the problem and try to change what’s wrong. In this case, I think I have to first of all check if I’m doing OK in my proper life and I think I’m doing so, now I’ll just work and it will come.”
Hatrick Loading….
I love this.
F’n right!!!
Auba has been looking really unhappy lately, if he can bring his usual happy self back he’ll start scoring plenty of goals. Hopefully all that studying of how, why and when he scores goals will have put an end to all those useless crosses into the box, and come up with something more constructive, we can only hope.
I foresee a morale boosting win coming up…
Help for what? Spending his 400 000 per week?
There is no help…Auba must be sold once for all.
What help can the team mates provide when Arteta is sabotaging it with his tactics and non-negotiables Xhaka and Willian?
Trying to scientifically and precisely determine how a natural striker should receive and score goals is why he won’t score. Get in a creative midfielder and allow greater freedom on the part of forwards. Those goals will come.
I guess Smith rowee can be productive in creative part as we wait for Ozil in Jan.
Morning brothers, what I think and know the problem is creativety, Abu need someone that can provide him what he needs, someone that can feed him at the right time, not just feed, but someone like ozil who knows when to how to and whom to someone who will help and assist him, someone that will make his work more easier and not make it hard on him, that all he needs thanks.