Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang says he’s more than happy to shift his position on the pitch if the manager decides to incorporate Alex Lacazette in his starting line-up in the future.
The Gabon international was charged with leading the line in the opening game of the season against Manchester City, but switched to a wide left role when Unai Emery removed Aaron Ramsey and asked Alex Lacazette to play as a central striker.
Drawing attention to their strong relationship both on and off the field, Auba made clear that he’s only interested in doing what’s right for the team.
“We really get on well,” he told ESPN. “There is a spark between us when we are both on the pitch together.
“We look for each other, we saw it [on Sunday] against City when he came on.
“I don’t mind playing on the left if Laca is in the centre. We both want to do our best for the team.”
While Sunday’s 2-0 defeat to City was a disappointing start to the Emery era, Aubameyang, like Stephan Lichtsteiner and Hector Bellerin, has preached patience, insisting that the squad will continue to improve.
“We still need some time to adapt to the new manager and to integrate the new players.
“It is hard to test ourselves in a first game like this against City because they are so strong.
“We have to stay positive, work on the things we did well and improve on the rest.
“We will have a better idea next weekend after the Chelsea game. ‘The message of the new coach is all about showing character, to put a lot of intensity, play high up the pitch and implement a big pressing.
“That’s the style we will play this season.”
Great news, I can’t see many goals this season apart from these two, don’t know who else is going to get into double figures (Ramsey maybe if he has a great season, can’t see Ozil, Mkhit etc).
If we had two classic wingers, Laca and PEA could both play through the middle together. Just a thought.
The headline is a little dirteh. C-careful there.
Remember when we in the middle of signing Aubameyang and various idiots were saying he would split the dressing room and cause trouble !? Hes been awesome for the club on and off the pitch.
A certain T Henry used to like it out on the left & cutting in, I can see Auba doing the same with his pace.
On the one hand, yes, i’m all for having them both in the team because they’re both great players. On the other though, i do worry for our fullbacks. With the best will in the world, Auba and Ozil are not really wide players and that does show in the defensive side of the game. Yes they track back, but not consistently or with tactical awareness.
I think Emery doesn’t understand the negativity that has surrounded this team for years. If he is not careful, the negativity will engulf him and he won’t last as a result. This team was crying out for major changes last year. The team did not win an away game in 2018 until the end of the season and he picked some of the culprit of that debacle to start against city. It’s not going to be long before opinions change if he keeps playing Xhaka or ahead of the new signings
Seriously? It’s not like he had a massive choice to change every player. Also it’s not like the players we have aren’t good. Maybe a few fall below how we’d like them to be but we are not a bad team, we were playing the best team in England FFS. Give Emery a chance.
yeah, laca is a far better striker than auba, and yeah, its going to take two or three seasons to get to where emery wants us to be, so I wont be complaining about any results, but I will be looking forward to the next few transfer windows, they could be very interesting indeed
If it were up to me both would start. The sacrificial lamb would be Ozil or Ramsey. I feel they can be deployed differently.
I am hoping we can try the diamond formation. We’d lack width but it would bring out the best in Lacazette and auba. And the no. 10 behind them which if we’re upto to me would be mkhi.
With Auba/Lacazette, we need to play a 4-1-3-2 which is itself an expression of the baselin 4-2-3-1 but with emphasis on Auba playing closer to Lacazette higher up taking turns to drop or show presence near the Cbacks It will be dictated upon Torreira firming up the spot just ahead of the Cbacks We previously needed two players to shield and even so there are issues. If Torreira can provide a one player shield ahead of Cbacks, we free oursleves up to fully exploit a Laca/Auba partnership high up In that case, yes I feel one of Ozil or Ramsey… Read more »
Hahaha people doubting if we will score goals when we were joint 3rd on goals scored last season even though we had the worst season in 20 years!! Chill out.. No other team has 2 strikers that could guarantee you 20+ season but we do ..
We should have goals in us. Its the other end that lets us down but Aubameyang’s record last season needs to be taken with a pinch of salt bc there have been games where he has drawn blank too and we know Laca struggled. What we need to do is find goals in every game regardless. We were out of sync against City which was a pity bc we got ourselves plenty of opportunties (which is a positive) particularly from pressure and turnovers high up. Ozil himself had 3 great opportunities, one from Lichsteiner which he miscued, one he carved… Read more »
Still think though Aubameyang is better centrally. Out left, he has issues to deal with further back plus when we press high, we really want his speed on the apex to feed on to. Felt we would have been better with Iwobi left. It would have given AMN greater cover against Walker (rather than Mhki) and both AMN/Iwobi were quite telepathic against Chelsea pre-season. We lack wide players like City, Liverpool, Chelsea do. This has been an inherent problem since last summer arguably (Even in last 6 months of Alexis) but certainly after selling off Theo, Ox and Alexis in… Read more »
TLDR
Would be nice to see Auba laca to start against the Chavs. Pls