Arsenal Boss Mikel Arteta Faces Dilemma As Dusan Vlahović Slips Through His Fingers

Barely a year and a half have passed since Mikel Arteta was cooing over Arsenal securing the services of an elite striker for three years.

“He’s a superb player with an incredible mentality,” the manager said.

“He’s an important leader for the team and a big part of what we’re building. He wants to be up there with the best players in the world and leave his mark. He can achieve that here.”

This description looks almost ironic with the benefit of hindsight.

Because stripped of the captaincy and touted for around Europe for a potential sale, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang couldn’t be further from the Arsenal first-team picture.

This month Arteta has been scrabbling around attempting to find a top-level striker to fill the Gabonese international’s boots.

He received a significant blow in this pursuit this week as number one target Dusan Vlahović, the man they wanted to help fire the club to a challenge for the Champions League, entered talks with Juventus about a transfer to Turin.

According to reports in Italy, neither Arsenal nor its bitter rivals Spurs were even considered by the Serb who preferred to stay in Southern Europe.

Some media outlets are saying the North Londoners are now pursuing other targets including Real Sociedad’s Alexander Isak and Everton’s Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

Without Aubameyang Arsenal’s attacking options look worryingly thin.

The other two forwards on the books, Alexandre Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah have contracts running out at the end of the season and have hardly lit up the league.

Neither looks like signing a new deal currently, which means Arsenal could be striker-less come after the 2021/22 season.

So what should Arteta do?  

2022: The great striker shortage 

Arsenal is far from the only top club seeking to add a striker to its ranks in 2022.

It has been exhaustively documented that Manchester City has been operating effectively with no striker for the past two seasons.

But the lack of attacking talent goes further than that.

Across Europe, the age of strikers at the continent’s top sides is remarkably old.

Real Madrid still relies on 34-year-old Karim Benzema to lead the line at the Bernabéu, while Bayern Munich has Robert Lewandowski as its number one striker at 33.

The top three scorers in Europe last season were all over the age of 33 and only two in the top 10 were younger than 25.

That pair of youngsters was, of course, Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland, who every major club in Europe are vying to sign.

Another way to interpret this is that the role of the striker has changed, teams like Liverpool have shown that if wide forwards, like Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané, are good enough then you don’t need a superstar number 9.

But if the clubs at the very top of the game are relying on players well into their 30s, then teams like Arsenal who are currently not in the Champions League will find it even harder to find value.

Pride comes before a fall?  

The Arsenal reign of Mikel Arteta has been defined so far by its fits and starts.

One moment it will feel like momentum appears to be building and an excellent team is being born, only for it all to come to a grinding halt.

But throughout that boom and bust, there has been one constant, Arteta has been unafraid to make big decisive calls about players.

For example, Matteo Guendouzi looked as if he was developing into an exciting talent, someone who could give the Arsenal midfield some bite, he was a little raw but it looked like under the guidance of Arteta he could eventually develop into a top player.

However, the Frenchman was abruptly ostracised from the first-team picture after an altercation with Brighton forward Neal Maupay.

It emerged that Arteta was unhappy about a string of disciplinary actions by the player and the bust-up with Maupay was the final straw.

A similar sequence of events took place with former Arsenal record-signing Mesut Özil who was frozen out of the first-team picture and eventually sold to Fenerbahce.

But, while the situations with both those players were inherited from previous coaches, there is no doubting that the Aubameyang debacle is of Arteta’s own making.

After all, it was the Spaniard who decided that he could be the leader for Arsenal for the next three years when he signed a new contract in September 2020.

The deal reportedly cost the club $80 million and now looks like a very bad move.

Although there is interest in the Gabon star, his age and his wages have priced many out of a transfer.

Currently, it appears only the Saudi Arabian side Al Hilal is willing to take the forward and cover his full salary, a move Aubameyang is not apparently keen on.

The January window is a difficult time for any club to do business and the possibility remains that he may stay at Arsenal.

It raises the question of whether the manager can successfully make use of him for the remaining months of the season or if he’ll be frozen out like the other players before him.

As I’ve written before, the ability to extract the best performances from want-away stars is one of the underrated abilities in Arteta’s mentor Pep Guardiola’s locker. 

Whether he can do that with Aubameyang is a true test of his managerial metal.

Ultimately, the Arsenal manager may decide that principles are not worth bending.

His statements after the Guendouzi situation suggest that the ‘non-negotiables’ he demands of his squad are, as they say on Twitter, the hill he is willing to die on.  

“I want players that respect the values that we want to implement, that are 100 percent committed to our culture and players that are accountable every day for what we demand from them,” Arteta said at the time. 

“Players that are ready to help each other, fight for each other and enjoy playing together. If you behave like this every day, you are very, very welcome here and we want to get the best out of you and help you to enjoy your profession with us.”