Arsenal vs. Chelsea: Aubameyang's goal machine has everything the Blues needs to attack

Chelsea's decision to use Gonzalo Higuain to bolster their attack seems a necessary step for the top scorers of the "big six" of the Premier League.

Alvaro Morata has tried hard enough to sound like a goal guarantee that the Blues were thinking of buying at Real Madrid, Olivier Giroud is injured or not, and Eden Hazard, as brilliant as he is, is much better on the left flank.

But if Higuain, who is about to get a loan from Stamford Bridge, needs help figuring out what he has to do to get into English football, he would do a lot worse. than to talk to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Indeed, a year ago, it is Arsenal who introduced an experienced striker of the continent in an agreement that, paradoxically, allowed Chelsea to bring Giroud.

Amid the upheavals taking place in the Emirates, with the arrival of a new manager, Aaron Ramsey and Mesut Ozil not really knowing what is happening, the Gabonese striker was the most consistent and most effective club over the past 12 years. month.

The January transfer window is not considered a reliable time to make impactful signatures. Instead, it often offers a combination of calculated wagers, dice rolls, and optimistic loan moves. But guided by former Dortmund recruiting boss Sven Mislintat, who is another man about to leave the Gunners, London's Northmen have approved a club record transfer fee for Aubameyang.

Money well spent?

Since Aubameyang joined Arsenal, only Mohamed Salah has scored more goals in the Premier League. Both have an expected goal rate of 21.4, but the Liverpool man has managed 14 more shots. The 29-year-old is less likely to score than Salah, but when he does, his quality is generally satisfactory.

It's been almost 20 years since Arsene Wenger proclaimed Francis Jeffers the "fox of the surface" Arsenal needed – he scored four times in the Premier League. It has been a long time since Arsenal had an ambitious goalscorer with proportions of Thierry Henry who could score a better rate than a goal in every match – in Aubameyang, they seem to have exactly that.

Decisive and deadly, the Gabonese striker has an average of only six touches per goal, well below the likes of Salah, Hazard and Sergio Aguero. The average number of hits in the box of players who have scored 10 goals or more in the Premier League since the start of Aubameyang is 11.3, almost double that of Arsenal.

He is sufficiently involved in other aspects of the game, and despite a propensity to arrange his goals with a tendency to spoil some high quality opportunities (in total, Aubameyang has split into 15 "Big Chances' defined by Opta, at least two more than any other player in the division), it's hard to argue with the impressive regularity of the Arsenal striker.

Aubameyang will become, if he scores at least once in the next two games, the fifth fastest player to reach 25 goals in the Premier League. A count of 24 in 35 appearances means that a goal against Chelsea or Cardiff will see him slip between Fernando Torres and Aguero.

The fastest of the 25 goals of the Premier League in the history of Arsenal? Henry. In 42 matches. Aubameyang is on the right track to beat it comfortably and with games to spare.

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Come back to January 2019 and, on paper, spending more than 50 million pounds for a player who turns 30 in 2019 was not a very arsenal. But in the context of a club that seems to want to unload the star players who prefer to stay and release the players they would prefer to keep, the signing at Aubameyang has been a stabilizing element of this eventful year for the Gunners.

And, who knows, with Harry Kane put away until March, Aubameyang could even crown his first full season in England with the Golden Boot. To you, Gonzalo. No pressure.