Arsenal Vs Everton: There’s a reason Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang played on Thursday

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang started against FC Vorskla and scored twice. The confidence boost that it gave the Arsenal striker is why Unai Emery started him.

Strikers feed off goals. It is the reason they exist. It is their motivation for playing. It is, for some, their be-all and end-all. It was not uncommon to see Ruud van Nistelrooy slump on the sidelines when his team won because he hadn’t scored a goal. It was actually a contributing reason as to why Sir Alex Ferguson shipped him out of Manchester United. The selfish streak that all strikers need had become too much.

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It is important for strikers, especially those that pride themselves on their consistent and reliable ability to score goals, to feel confident. They must be confident when they strike at goal. They must be confident when they dart across the near post. They must be confident when they burst in behind the defence with only the goalkeeper to beat. And to be confident, they must score goals.

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Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is very much built out of this mould. He may be a multi-faceted centre-forward who brings more to the table than many may give him credit for, but, at his heart, he is a natural-born goalscorer. That’s his nature. And so, after five league games this season and just one goal scored, it was equally natural that the Arsenal striker was not playing with the same strut as when he was scoring 10 goals in 13 appearances just four short months ago.

Unai Emery, I believe, was acutely aware of the confidence boost that he could inject into Aubameyang by starting him against FC Vorskla as Arsenal opened their Europa League campaign on Thursday night. This was a match that his team were expected to win comfortably. Aubameyang wasn’t needed. He could have been rested. But Emery decided to start him, partly because he wanted to win and he knew that Aubameyang gave him the best chance of doing so, but also because he wanted to provide Aubameyang with the opportunity to score, which the Gabonian duly took, notching two goals on the night.

The Premier League now returns to the fore with Everton arriving at the Emirates on Sunday afternoon. These are the type of games that your strikers can win singlehandedly for you. Arsenal will likely dominate possession. If they can provide the right service, their goalscorers can put this game to bed before it ever really gets going. Having a confident Aubameyang will help.

If Emery and his players are to challenge for the top four and maybe more this season, then Aubameyang will have to play a central part. He is the best player in the squad. He is their most threatening attacking weapon, the only one who can reliably be described as a genuine, world-class game-changer. If he isn’t playing well, success will be hard to find.

And so, games like the win over FC Vorskla may not seem all that important in the grand scheme of things — Arsenal probably would have won anyway and, even if they didn’t, could likely qualify from the group without winning. But for Aubameyang, it could well turn out to be a significant outing, one that spurred him towards a string of game-changing, net-bulging strikes.

There’s a reason Aubameyang played on Thursday. And it’s more than just picking the best team to win the game on the day. Emery wanted to provide Aubameyang with confidence. He succeeded. Now he gets to sit back and watch the striker do what only he can do: score, score and score some more.