Arsenal: Don’t sell Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, damnit!

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang won the Golden Boot for Arsenal last year, yet the talk of selling him persists. Give it up. It’s not a good idea.

There have been moments this summer where I entertained the idea of selling Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Arsenal supposedly need money, since they can’t get a damn deal done, and Aubameyang should be able to raise a small fortune due to winning the Golden Boot and to… being Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

But as the summer has gone on, this idea has proven less and less appealing. Not because he’s gone out of his way to do anything, but because the idea of selling him has always been daunting, and with only Manchester United barking, it’s really not worth it.

What really changed my already-hesitant mind was seeing Alexandre Lacazette playing in a pseudo-No. 10 role. It was so Bergkamp and Henry, the idea of Lacazette playing the false No. 9 role off of Aubameyang’s shoulder.

It’s something we only caught glimpses of in two-striker sets last year, as the two seemed to form to those roles naturally, but it’s something that makes so much sense and, if Unai Emery is willing to really invest in that, then selling Aubameyang defeats the whole purpose.

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Funny, how so much of what goes on at this club depends on Lacazette, but there’s a reason. It’s cause he’s so damn good.

That said, I don’t see Lacazette as the lone striker type. I don’t think Arsene Wenger did either, otherwise Aubameyang wouldn’t been be here. Lacazette is not your cold-blooded goal scorer type. He is at his best with an elite partner like Aubameyang who he can play off of, feed, and combine with.

Granted, part of the lone Lacazette problem came from not having anything solid around him, so maybe with a decent set-up, he could make the role work, but why experiment? We saw that Lacazette and Aubameyang are the perfect tandem. They are only going to get better, and if Emery really is serious about this new and improved role for Lacazette, than the formation of choice could the that modified 4-4-2 that kind of looks like a 4-2-3-1.

Keep your best players. That’s something Arsenal had trouble with in the past, but they don’t need to have trouble with it anymore. These are elite players that want to be here and we should want them to be here to. So dismiss this nonsense.