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Arsene Wenger claims £56m signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is a bargain after goal on Arsenal debut
Arsene Wenger believes Arsenal’s £56 million record signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will prove to be a bargain and warned there is more to come from the striker.
Aubameyang marked his Arsenal debut with a goal in the 5-1 thrashing of Everton, in which another of Wenger’s January signings, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, shone.
On Aubmeyang, Arsenal manager Wenger said: “It’s a reasonable price, I think so yes. That quality of striker, on today’s market, it’s a very good price.
“I feel the quality of his movement was excellent. The quality of his finishing looks excellent. He is not completely at his best physically and still has work to do in that respect.”
Aaron Ramsey netted a hat-trick and yet it was the performance of Mkhitaryan, who arrived at Arsenal from Manchester United in a swap deal involving Alexis Sanchez, which had the Emirates crowd purring.
“He is a good link player and works very hard as well,” said Wenger. “Overall, he looked well accepted by the rest of the team and had an understanding of how we wanted to play. It was a convincing debut.”
The result marked an unhappy return for former Arsenal forward Theo Walcott, who was part of an Everton performance that manager Sam Allardyce labelled as being “total crap.”
Allardyce blasted his team by saying: “If you play at the Emirates you’ve got to play at your best and our XI didn’t play anywhere near our best, that’s why we were tumbling goals in a pathetic performance. Our attacking wasn’t any good and our defending was pathetic.”
Ademola Lookman scored on his RB Leipzig debut, having joined the Germans on loan, but Allardyce rejected the suggestion Everton would have benefitted from keeping him. Allardyce said: “We’ve got £20 million Theo Walcott and £30m Yannick Bolasie, and if you’d put him (Lookman) out there he wouldn’t have done any better than the rest because the whole team played crap.”