Mikel Arteta has opened up on why he thinks Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has struggled in front of goal this season.
The Gabon striker scored 29 goals in 44 matches last season but has just six in 19 this time around, including the one he scored against Liverpool in the Community Shield.
After scoring against Newcastle in the FA Cup last Saturday the hope was that he could carry that form into the Premier League but the 32-year-old fired another blank against Crystal Palace on Thursday.
And now Arteta has revealed why he thinks Aubameyang has struggled this season.
"Yeah but it's not about individuals, but as a collective we have to do more," he said after the Palace game.
"And then for sure when you look at the way these games are won there are individual actions rather than collective actions.
"It's a moment of spark that has to open the game up and then the game becomes much easier to get it what you want. But today we missed that.
"It's not just Auba, it's other players. A lot of simple balls that we gave away without any real pressure that allowed Palace to run in transition.
"But for me it was more than anything a little bit lack of freshness. It's a lot of fixtures a lot of games, but we cannot use that as an excuse. I think we have to do better."
Arsenal have struggled on countless occasions to break down opposition defences when they set up in low blocks this season.
It took extra time to do so against Newcastle in the cup last week and Arteta admitted his side will need to be more efficient if they want to beat them in the 90 minutes on Monday.
"Well we did a lot of good things there," he said. "But we didn't have the capacity to the ball in the net in our situations that we created
"Against them, be ruthless in front of goal. The moment we created the chances, the mindset to attack them as much as possible, hit the target as many times as we possibly can, and we'll be fine."
