Arsenal: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang limitations stifle his praise

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is a somewhat limited centre-forward. Because of this, the Arsenal forward’s goalscoring exploits rarely get the praise they deserve.

Sergio Aguero might well be the greatest striker in the world. He might also stake a claim to being the greatest striker in the history of the Premier League. He is also pretty close to being the best player in Manchester City’s history. But he is never really considered in those grandiose terms.

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Consistently, Aguero is overlooked as a truly great centre-forward. The likes of Luis Suarez, Robert Lewandowski and Zlatan Ibrahimovic were always considered before a thought even drifted towards the Argentine. And this is to belie his real quality and skill. He is a player on a par with those equally brilliant centre-forwards.

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To say why this is, I would suggest, is because he is almost exclusively a goalscoring centre-forward. Unlike many other lone strikers in the world, Aguero offers little to the general build-up play, he does not drop deep and involve himself in the midfield combination, he is not a big, bruising backboard to play off, he does not even run the channels with the same speed and intensity as other strikers. He just scores goals. In every sense, he is a true goal poacher.

I start this piece with Aguero and my belief that he is not celebrated as his talent deserves because I feel it is a mirroring of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang at Arsenal. Although with an extremely difficult style, Aubameyang, like Aguero, is almost exclusively poacher. His game completely and utterly revolves around his insatiable ability to score goals and little else.

And Aubameyang truly is a sensational goalscorer. Since his signing last January, he has played 3,267 minutes of Premier League football. He has scored a remarkable 27 goals in that period. You can add another four goals in 485 minutes of Europa League action. That rate is comparable with the very best goalscorers in the history of the Premier League.

This season, his 130 minutes-per-goal scoring rate is bettered by only Aguero, of players who have played more than 1000 minutes. He is scoring quicker than Harry Kane, Eden Hazard, Mohamed Salah, than every other player in the league. He is also right in the heart of the golden boot race. That really is quite something.

Yet, it feels like Aubameyang is not quite put in the same category of centre-forward as a Harry Kane, for example. And perhaps that’s because he isn’t. I have been critical of his limited style, arguing that Alexandre Lacazette is the more complete forward. But sometimes, we can go too far in our analysis and forget just how difficult it is to consistently score goals at the rate that Aubameyang has throughout his career.

Aubameyang is actually underrated, especially by me. The praise he receives is stifled by his limitations, and that, like with Aguero, is not quite fair.