Mikel Arteta delighted with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's impact in Newcastle win
By Tom Gott
It has been a tricky season for Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, but he looked close to his best on Monday as he fired home two goals in a 3-0 win over Newcastle United.
Despite a rocky start to the game, in which he missed a handful of good chances, Aubameyang came flying out of the blocks after half-time and finished off a counter to open the scoring, and he remained locked-in and scored his team's third late on.
They were just his fourth and fifth goals of the season so far, and manager Mikel Arteta was delighted to see Aubameyang's determination to score shine through.
"That is what he has done through his career and mentally you have to be really strong in order to do that, and come out of a difficult period where we miss his goals a lot and today he has come back and scored two and contributed to the team winning, which is exactly what we need," he said (via the club's official website). "So I am really pleased for him.
"I had various conversations with him, to try to support him, help him, give him some guidance. At the end [of the day], internally, you are the one who suffers. To open up, it’s complicated.
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"He takes a lot of responsibility, he’s very critical with himself and he knows his role in the team and how important he is for our success. But there’s only one way, work harder, put your head down, be humble and try to keep helping the team. That’s all."
Aubameyang may have stolen the headlines, but it was the performances of young duo Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka, who combined for the latter's goal midway through the second half, which had Arsenal fans drooling.
Their performances have kept senior players like Willian and Nicolas Pepe out of the starting lineup, and while Arteta insisted he has seen no signs of unhappiness from his senior players, he did have a few choice words for Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who was left out of the squad altogether.
"He needs to compete for his place like everybody else," the boss said. "There have been a lot of players who have been left out of the squad and they have less minutes.
"Ainsley has played some minutes in the league, he’s played a lot of minutes in the Europa League. He’s played in the Emirates FA Cup, he’s played semi-finals and finals for us so it’s about him, his performances and how much he wants to be in the team."