City’s huge crunch match with fourth placed Arsenal is only days away, and City fans will be as desperate for a win as ever. With City having lost their fourth game of the season away to Newcastle only a few days ago, Pep will be wanting a real reaction in their Sunday afternoon clash with the Gunners.
This matchup of two premier league titans has recently brought up with it an interesting comparison of two key players; Sergio Aguero of Manchester City and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang of Arsenal. Now, statistically, there has not really been much history between the two strikers in recent match-ups, and that is mainly down to the fact that the latter has only been wearing the north London club’s colours for the last twelve months. In that time, City have faced Arsenal on three separate occasions; and they have a good track record, having won all three of those games with an aggregate score line of eight nil. In fact, you would have to go back to April 23rd 2017 to find when Arsenal last beat Manchester City, with that result coming in a 2-1 FA Cup semi-final loss. The fact that Aubameyang has yet to win against (or even draw against) City since he was signed from Borussia Dortmund in January of 2018 bodes extremely well for City’s upcoming tie with Arsenal – and Sergio Aguero in particular will be hoping to concentrate a damaging display onto the Gabon international and his team mates.
In terms of a more direct comparison between the two strikers however, it is currently Aubameyang who has the edge, having scored fifteen goals this campaign so far. This, compared to Sergio’s eleven, shows that Aubameyang has enjoyed more goal scoring success in the season so far – but that is not to say that Sergio has been left behind in the wake. Every City fan knows how lethal Aguero can be, and that it can only take a matter of moments in any particular game for the diminutive Argentine to quickly climb the top goals charts.
There is no question either that Pierre EA has been a massively positive influence on his squad since joining last year. In his first year at the club in all competitions, Aubameyang has scored a total of twenty five (25) goals in thirty seven (37) appearances; a decent return so far for Arsenal’s £56 million investment. However, when these numbers are compared to Sergio Aguero’s first year in sky blue, we find that they are actually quite similar. Aguero amassed thirty (30) goals in all competitions in his first season at the previously named City of Manchester Stadium (during the 2011/12 season), as well as this, the pair also have an incredibly similar minutes per goal ratio. Aguero scores on average every 121 minutes of football that he plays, and Aubameyang tends to score on average every 129 minutes of football he is involved in.
The reasoning behind this may be more apparent than it may seem at first. Both attackers are known for being very pacy and agile. Both have established themselves elsewhere in Europe for a long period of time before making the switch to the Premier League, and both also are more used to playing as lone strikers in the clubs they have previously played for. All of these facts make for an interesting argument when it comes to deciding who is the more clinical forward. Many City fans would likely put the case forward for Sergio that he is currently at the point where he is already established as a legendary Premier League striker, who has also been known to reliably get the blues out of sticky situations; the dramatic 94th minute winner against QPR to win City the title back in 2012, and the game against Bayern Munich in which Sergio scored one of his nine club hat tricks back in November of 2014 come to mind to back this point up.
None of this is to say however that Aubameyang has not achieved similar feats during his times at Saint-Étienne and Dortmund respectively. In the approximate two years that PEA was playing in France, the Gabonese international managed to net a total of thirty seven (37) times, this number would greatly improve when he went on to transfer to Dortmund in 2013. He went on to score ninety eight (98) times in all competitions for the German giants before making his eventual switch to North London. Granted these ninety eight goals were scored over five years (in between 2013 and 2018), but it does not take away from the fact that Aubameyang knows how to score; and to score when it matters too.
It will be thrilling to see how the two match up against each other come Sunday afternoon at the Etihad Stadium, that is assuming that both of these prolific talismans of their clubs are actually involved in the game in the first place. Based on previous form this year, it would be difficult to see why they would not be included in their respective starting elevens, let alone to play a part off the substitutes bench…
City fans will of course be hoping that their club record goal scorer can influence the tie in their favour; but by all means, do not bet against Aubameyang being ever present in the game either.
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