Arsenal were knocked out of the Europa League semi-final last week by Villarreal and pundit Paul Merson has now pointed fingers at Mikel Arteta.
The Arsenal boss made a bizarre choice to play with a false-nine in the first leg, a decision for which he had to face a lot of criticism. In the second leg, the manager chose to keep things simple but his decision to take off Aubameyang in the dying minutes has not gone down too well with Paul Merson.
Aubameyang had just come back into the starting line-up after recovering from malaria and during the match, he came the closer than anyone else to score, striking the post twice. But still, Mikel Arteta opted to take him off with 10 minutes still left on the clock.
‘It’s the worst I’ve ever seen[taking off Aubameyang],’ Merson told Sky Sports, as quoted by Metro.
‘That’s the worst I’ve seen. That was a semi-final of a European game and there was absolutely no urgency. If you’d have come in and turned it on with 10 minutes to go you’d have thought Arsenal were through.
‘It was mind-blowing at the highest level. Aubameyang’s coming off, top goalscorer. You need a goal, you’ve got to keep him on the pitch.
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‘You’re bringing players on who haven’t scored all season. It was as bad as it could possibly get, it was an embarrassment. No European football for the first time in 25 years, it’s an absolute joke.’
Aubameyang and Tierney were taken off at the 80-minute mark and were replaced by Lacazette and Willian. Lacazette has been in pretty good form over the past couple of months but no one quite understood why the manager chose to put Willian on the pitch.
Eddie Nketiah was the more sensible choice since the youngster has been much more of a threat this season rather than Willian, a winger who has not scored a single goal in 24 Premier League games this season.
Mikel Arteta has tried to take a lot of such bold decisions this season at Arsenal but almost all of them have backfired. And now two major tactical failures in the two legs mean the North London side will not be playing in Europe next season.
