Arsenal vs Swansea: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang can’t fix that

Arsenal will supposedly wrap up Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang today, but despite that, he alone won’t fix what happened against Swansea.

Arsenal’s loss against Swansea City was unexpected and completely expected. It was unexpected because you’d think that, after so many positive results and having dumped Alexis Sanchez at last, that they’d be in good spirits.

They weren’t.

It was expected because this is Arsenal and as it so often goes with this club, right when you think “well there is no way they could mess this up,” they go ahead and they mess it up. Swansea was that mess up. Which means that they will probably not lose again for two months and then suffer a crushing defeat against Brighton in Match.

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The name of the failure was yet again complete and utter mental collapse. The defense was at fault for every single goal, surrendering to ungodly mistakes and then incapably dealing with them.

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It was a horror show. And there was nothing anyone could do about it. Or at least that’s how it felt. And that brought me to my next painful realization – that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang wouldn’t have fixed it.

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Now, we could argue until we are blue in the face that maybe he would have been in better positions than Alexandre Lacazette, or been able to outrun defenders unlike Lacazette and sure, maybe we nick back a goal. Hell, maybe even two.

But Aubameyang does not bring the mindset that this team so tragically lacks. I don’t think any one person does. There is something missing in this squad. Some depth of understanding or comprehension. Because anytime things start going poorly, nothing changes.

This isn’t the first time that, despite falling behind, the Gunners still looked stale on the attack and completely emotionless to change it. All the way up until the moments of desperation, they were still hitting square balls, playing it back to the keeper (goal No. 2) and utterly flubbing in the urgency department.

Aubameyang doesn’t change that.

The best I can say is that maybe having Aubameyang up there gives more confidence to the rest of the team. Maybe he inspires Lacazette to fight a little bit harder or focus a little bit more.

But Aubameyang has nothing to do with this defenses inability to carry out simple tasks like clearances. He isn’t going to stop players from having absolutely no awareness when trying to defend the simplest of runs.

Next: 5 Things Learned Against Swansea City

He is going to help. Oh man, is he going to help. But the deep-seated problems that have plagued this club for a decade are still there. Even with Theo Walcott sold. So what do we do now?