One of the most interesting storylines within football in recent weeks has been the narrative surrounding Arsenal and their former club captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
The Gabonese striker has not played for Arsenal since December 6th following a breach of club discipline, and he has also been stripped of the captaincy.
Now, Arsenal have made it clear that they are willing to listen to offers for the 32-year-old striker.
This has been a quick development for a player who signed a new contract last season, which made him the highest earner at the club.
Whether there will be a market for the forward or not remains to be seen.
His contract and age, combined with the fact that Arsenal will still look for a fee in return for the player, will likely limit the number of clubs that have an interest in the player.
The most interesting aspect of this for me, however, is that Arsenal are now in a position with the Aubameyang situation and Alexandre Lacazette being out of contract in the summer in which they can rebuild the attacking side of their squad.
Mikel Arteta is now in a position where he has established himself as a coach with a clear vision and gameplay and this has now started to translate to points and performances and as such his position and backing from the board and the fanbase has put him in a powerful position.
The question, though, is what Arteta will want to do in the position.
Arsenal is in a position at the moment when they have a number of extremely exciting attacking players in Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith-Rowe and Garbiel Martinelli and then, coming from the midfield; they have the creativity of the Norwegian international Martin Odegaard.
The key will be finding a striker who does not block the pathway of any of those players and who has the ability to link play and provide an attacking platform before bringing those players into the game in the attacking phase.
In this article, I have used data to look for players who I believe will make an interesting fit at the Emirates and who will enable the development of the young players already at the club.
All data is from Wyscout with Tableau then used to compare and visualise the outputs.
The Analysis
First things first though, we have to address our data set.
I have included all strikers from the top 5 European leagues as well as the top flights of Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands who are 28 years old or younger.
