There was a moment, maybe 15 years ago, when Arsenal seemed to have made a familiar trope in the football lexicon redundant.
The notion of “service” for a centre forward, of 10 players working the ball up for a target man to nod, clip, tap or roll the ball home, suddenly looked clunky and old fashioned against the synchronistic oneness of Arsène Wenger’s smooth, groovy Invincibles.
An inheritance of which is still on show weekly in the Premier League – at Manchester City, at Liverpool, even at Aston Villa during their heady early-season score-fest. Curiously though, the phenomenon seems to have gone into hibernation at the very club where it was once a way of life.
For Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, that target man was until recently his talisman, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who since signing a three-year contract extension last month has seen his scoring touch desert him. No goals in five games, following a blunted showing in the 1-0 defeat to Leicester at the weekend, equals a veritable drought for last season’s second-highest scorer in the Premier League.
“Target man” may seem a derisory term for one of the country’s best, most devastating strikers.
But against Leicester there was a certain frustration about Arsenal’s attack that isolated Aubameyang, a creative block that left his partners in the forward line seeking but failing to find his runs, darts and forays. Bukayo Saka and Alexandre Lacazette were at least more involved for their part, but with their main goal threat out of sorts, Arsenal looked wonky and ineffective for all their busyness.
Aubameyang’s troubles have clearly made an impression on Arteta, but not to the extent that he seems sure of how to correct them. That the 31-year-old had started the game against Leicester in unfamiliar territory on the right of the front three suggested the manager had long been mulling the issue of his star striker’s reduced recent involvement in games.
His switch to the left in the second half brought little change on that front, unless it was to slightly weaken the rhythm of what on the whole had been a broadly promising first-half display from his side. But with Aubameyang labouring on the periphery, the team’s attacking compass seems to point nowhere.
Ahead of Arsenal’s game against Dundalk in the Europa League tonight, Arteta was asked whether a move to the apex of the team’s front three might be the key to re-starting Aubameyang’s season. “That’s a very possible thing,” said the manager. “It depends on the game and it depends on who is around him. But it’s a very strong possibility to play him as a nine, of course.”
Aubameyang hasn’t scored for Arsenal in the league since the opening-day 3-0 win over Fulham seven weeks ago. The team have scored just five Premier League goals since, and there has been a noticeable and growing frustration from the striker that he has been unable to build personally on a strong finish to last season.
Whether the solution lies with more positional tinkering or in a recalibration of the striker’s confidence is a point on which the manager, outwardly at least, seemed assured.
“From our side we have to give him more opportunities, more shots,” said Arteta. “Put him in better positions, try to accumulate more players around him to create better situations for him. And he needs to step in as well. When that happens, he has the right opportunities.
“In these games, you’re not going to have 10 opportunities to score. He needs to make it happen.
“Teams pay a lot of attention to him. That’s why sometimes we have to change his position, because every team is preparing to stop him.
“If it was another player, I’d say maybe it’s confidence. But not with Auba.”
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