Aubameyang’s Arsenal struggles have multiple causes

Leaving the Emirates Stadium on Saturday with a clean sheet, two goals and three points meant it was smiles almost all round for Arsenal. On another day where youth blossomed, seniority struggled.

Prior to the season beginning, the chances of success had been pinned down on a few key factors. There were individual elements that if not achieved would severely hamper chances of meeting the targets set. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang getting back among the goals was one of them.

And, what would you know, he’s the club’s top scorer this season. But, honing in on what is the competition of greatest importance, he has four goals in 12 Premier League matches. His blank against the Magpies made it four matches in a row without scoring, and five consecutively without a goal in open play.

There is always this sadistic urge for a scapegoat in matches, even if the result goes the team’s way: Aubameyang has found himself filling in for that role more often than not. Plenty of the criticism is overboard, but trends don’t happen coincidentally and he is well off where everyone hoped he’d be when he signed his three-year contract.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s Arsenal struggles are the result of poor team chance creation and the natural decline of the striker’s superpowers

He is applying himself in other areas though, and rarely before has he looked his engaged in matches where his work rate has been this dedicated. No other player in the squad has applied more pressures than him this season.

But he isn’t scoring. That is his job. And mishaps like the Watford game change outlook with further installments.

As magnificent as he can be in the 18-yard box, he’s mostly unusable elsewhere. This term he’s dropped into the half-space more often and delivered a few very neat one-touch passes for Emile Smith Rowe that are clearly the work of training ground routines, but for the most part his involvement is minimal.

The goals are drying up and faith in him to be recapturing his goalscoring form of yesteryear is too. Why is this?

Firstly, it quite simply boils down to the number of chances being created across the team. Arsenal are creating fewer goalscoring opportunities, which means that Aubameyang is having fewer chances. Put whichever striker you want up front at Anfield and they would have had the same single second half chance that Aubameyang had.

Overall chance creation is still worryingly low: 15 goals in 13 league matches where the likes of Nicolas Pepe, Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard have a combined three goals. While the starting centre-forward is the one who has the leading role in finding the back of the net, it’s a team-wide issue that has yet to be rectified. The whole team isn’t scoring, not just the skipper.

Does that mean Aubameyang is free of blame? It most definitely does not, sadly.

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