Disciplinary problems

I put out a tweet last night that seems to have gained a lot more traction than any of my usual output. Speaking in regard to the game at the weekend and how it has been seemingly overshadowed by the events surrounding Aubameyang, I put out the following:

How did arsenal get on at the weekend? As far as I remember we won 3-0, but all I’m seeing is the arteta out accounts complaining about Auba being disciplined for breaching rules. We won. Be happy!

Now, at the time of writing I am sat at 805 likes, 39 retweets and a bunch of comments. However, where the Auba situation appears to have overshadowed the game, similar seems to have happened with the tweet, so I’d like to clarify my position on it.

That facts as we understand them (there may be more that is being kept in house. Who knows?) are that Aubameyang, the club captain, was permitted to travel to France to see his mother, on the proviso that he returned by Wednesday evening. This is to ensure that all club protocols surrounding COVID could be followed and he could be available to train on the Thursday. However, he returned early Thursday morning and was subsequently sent home from training, having been told he was not a part of the matchday plans. Arteta then confirmed pre-match on Saturday that he was absent due to a “disciplinary breach” but would not elaborate further. 

Now, assuming the details are as I have laid them out above then I would say that disciplining Auba was the right call. Missing training was not the issue, rather returning late from the trip that was approved. Let us not forget that this was his second instance of being late after he missed last seasons North London Derby. It’s not the sort of conduct that you would want from the club captain who should be setting an example to the younger players in the squad.

So, my position is that Arteta was right to discipline Auba and right to make it public. By confirming the absence was for a disciplinary breach, it enabled him to get ahead of the story to stop the endless speculation. You can almost guarantee that in this social media world we live in the news would have come out eventually, so had he said anything other than this he would have been found to have been lying, and the roundly criticised for lying, most likely by the same people who complained that he put the truth out.

But here’s the thing, if you don’t think he should have been punished then that is absolutely fine. That’s your opinion, you are entitled to it and I have absolutely no issue with you having it. The game is all about opinions after all. The thing that irks me most about it is that is all that has been talked about for the last three days since a comfortable win with a good performance and some goals.

I get that it was only Southampton. I get that we should be beating them. But the fact is, we have just come off two defeats where we took the lead, sat back and got punished for it. On Saturday, aside form the sloppy first 15 minutes or so we kept our foot down, just as fans have been screaming for and were rewarded with three goals, a clean sheet and a decent performance. 

For me, that is what should be the talking point. The captain was dropped due to a disciplinary breach, we went on and won 3-0 without him, lets all move on to West Ham. As I said in reply to someone last night, it would be good to see more focus on the positives for a change. We have enough negatives to deal with already without focusing on more.