Darren Bent has criticised Mikel Arteta for releasing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Arsenal in January.
Arsenal suffered a third-successive Premier League defeat on Saturday by losing 1-0 away to Southampton.
As a result, the Gunners’ Champions League qualification bid might be in tatters.
Arteta’s side have scored 12 Premier League goals since paying Aubameyang £7 million to terminate his contract, allowing him to join Barcelona on a free transfer earlier this year.
For context, the 32-year-old hitman has scored nine goals for his new club – including a hat-trick and a brace against Real Madrid.
After the Southampton defeat, the Spanish manager shone a spotlight on Fraser Forster’s performance, suggesting that on another day Arsenal would’ve won comfortably.
However, Bent, a Gooner, isn’t tolerating that excuse.
He told talkSPORT: “I don’t want to hear that their keeper was outstanding and ‘we should have scored’. Put the ball in the back of the net. You sold Aubameyang for nothing and let him go, and he would have scored a chance [in that game].”
Wrong decision?
Well, yes.
If Arteta wanted to get rid of Aubameyang then fair enough, but to not replace him was simply criminal.
When Arsenal paid money to release the Gabon international, they did so in the knowledge that they only had Alexandre Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah as striking options.
And both of them look certain to leave the Emirates Stadium on Bosmans this summer themselves, because neither are anywhere near good enough.
Lacazette, in particular, has only scored two Premier League goals from open play this season, so dumping someone of Aubameyang’s vintage, over a disciplinary issue related to returning to England later than agreed, is looking like a horrible piece of management.
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