Pierre-Emerick has four goals in 14 games this season.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has been making headlines for the wrong reasons before.
The club captain was stripped of his title on Tuesday after arriving home late from a trip abroad.
He was dropped from the starting line-up for the north London derby last season after turning up late to a team meeting, and he was also punished for breaking rules at his previous club.
After returning to England late last week, he trained on Thursday but was dropped from the squad for Saturday's victory over Saints by manager Mikel Arteta.
The captaincy of the club was taken away from him by Tuesday morning, and he won't play against West Ham this week.
Arteta said that the decision was made because he had failed to be committed at the level they all expected.
"What I expect from any person in this football club, that is representing this badge, is passion and that he gives absolutely 100%, that he puts the club in front of any personal interests and is able to do anything to fulfill the badge we have on the chest."
You can understand different cultures, but you have to be committed and passionate to do that. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
I am here to make the right decision every day, to defend the club, and to be consistent in what we do on and off the field. We have to be consistent in our decisions.
It is hard to get back trust.
Just months before the departure of the manager, the player who became a key player at the club was Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
He scored 22 goals in his first full season and won the Golden Boot.
He signed a new three-year deal with the team after his contract expired last year.
His influence waned and there are parallels to the situation of Mesut Ozil, who was left out of the squad and signed a lucrative contract after flirting with a move away.
Arteta made an important point to his squad, according to Nedum Onuoha.
"Aubameyang broke the trust and those things matter," Onuoha said. It's hard to get that trust back from your team-mates or the manager.
It feels like Mikel Arteta is making a statement. He's saying that a problem which you make yourself, isn't just going to be kept in house and can be something you can just get away with.
The Athletic reported that the player returned to France to care for his mother, but his former teammate Alan Shearer told Match of the Day that he did not have sympathy for the player.
"Arteta trusted him, he knew what the agreement was and he came back the next morning was totally unacceptable," said Sutton. Arteta's got a huge problem on his hands if he makes a rule and Aubameyang breaks it.
He's not the way forward.
Harry Symeou understands why the club offered one of their best players such a lucrative contract but feels there needs to be a contingency plan for the player's exit.
Symeou said it was too easy to say "when you give a player a big contract, this is what happens". If we'd given contracts to Cesc and Robin, they would not have left because of the club's perceived lack of ambition, but because of monetary reasons. You can't have it both ways.
We are at that point now, and aubameyang needs to move on. He is not the way to go. The need to move on has been accelerated by this.
Statistics show that the Gunners are less reliant on Aubameyang than they used to be.
In the past two seasons, his minutes per goal have been less than in the past two years. He scored 31.2% of the goals for the team in the last season.
The win percentage without the forward is better than it is with him, even dating back to his arrival. They have won more than 50% of the matches when he has played.
The shot conversion rate for the player is just 17.9%.
Symeou says that there is concern over the team's goal scoring prowess, but that the players have begun to work better as a team under Arteta.
"Arteta likes to invite the press and play around it; that requires players with great speed to be on their toes and be sharp on the break," he said.
I don't think the build-up play of Aubameyang has ever been that good, because he has a team of creators around him. The team is more functional now, which means we create fewer chances, and the goals need to be shared out.
The shot total for the past season and a half shows that it is way down from his more productive seasons under Unai Emery. He has had more attempts on goal since the start of last season.
There has been talk of potential replacements for some time because of the declining influence of the player. Dusan Vlahovic and Dominic Calvert-Lewin are both reported to be linked with a move to the North London club.
Symeou said that everyone wants to have the real deal up front, but they have to accept that the team is evolving tactically. That requires a different skill set to be able to do that. You will see a shift in the type of strikers the club will use. Everyone who has been linked so far has a willingness to run the channels.
We've never had a strikers fit for purpose, and Arteta's team have no problem creating overloads in wide areas to get crosses into the box.
