Aubameyang vs Salah: How Arsenal and Liverpool’s wing-forwards became the Premier League’s most prolific players

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Mohamed Salah and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang are two of the most prolific goalscorers in the Premier League.

Neither man was in the league in May 2017, but now here we are just over one year later and they are the men to fear.

Salah is the first player in Premier League history to score 32 goals in a 38-game season, meanwhile, Aubameyang has the best goals-to-minute ratio of any player to score at least 10 goals in the division’s history. They are the record breakers.

Since Aubameyang made his debut on February 3, having signed for Arsenal in the January transfer window, there has been just one striker that has managed to score more than the 17 goals he has racked up; that man? Mohamed Salah on 18.

These two are truly lethal. Both men are overperforming their expected goals (xG) by at least 3, which is absurd. More absurd is Aubameyang’s accuracy. Salah’s goals have come from 64 shots (excluding blocks), giving him a shot accuracy of 59.38% and a shot conversion of 28.13%.

These are good, solid numbers. Aubameyang, however, has a shot accuracy of 74.36% and a shot conversion of 43.59%. That means that nearly half of the 39 unblocked shots that he has taken for Arsenal have ended up in the back of the net.

Basically, if you’re an opposing defender facing Arsenal and Aubameyang is about to shoot? Throw your body in the way! It’s the most effective thing you can do to give your team a chance better than 50/50.

The key question is, however, is that how have both men become so prolific? How have they settled in so quickly and risen so prominently? Well, there are obviously a few reasons and factors, but one hyphenated word stands out above all else.

What is the ‘Half-space’?

“Half-space” is a term that originates from breaking the field up into zones, these zones are divided vertically. The middle zone is obviously the centre, the two zones on the sides of the pitch are the wings, and the half-spaces are those, well, spaces that exist between the middle and the wings.

Why divide the pitch up like this? Essentially because it allows for a team to retain a dangerous shape and not be stretched too thin or collapse into too narrow a shape. To use Liverpool as an example, if Sadio Mané has the ball on the left of attack then everyone is going to shift over to provide him with passing options.

This is fine, but if everyone collapses too close to Mané then the pitch becomes congested and passing lanes cease to exist. However if you limit the number of players who can enter the half-space near Mané, and moreover ensure that Mohamed Salah and Joe Gomez on the opposite flank never enter the centre but stay in their own half-space, Liverpool will have a very balanced shape from which to create. Not only will the ball move rapidly around Mané’s side of the field, but the switch of play over to Salah in the other half-space is always on.

If he were to receive a pass on the wing then Salah’s (or Aubameyang’s) passing options would be limited by the touchline. But in the half-space there is infinitely more passing options and passing lanes; which is especially important given the prevalence of inverted wingers like Salah and Aubameyang in the modern game.

Cutting infield onto their stronger feet, players like Salah and Aubameyang will have a 180-degree diagonal field of vision to pick a pass out, which includes central passes and crosses (or shots) and also using the vacant wing space to their back, threading through an overlapping full-back. For Liverpool, Salah uses Trent Alexander-Arnold in this way. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang would probably use one of Arsenal’s left-backs if they could stay fit for more than five seconds.

Of course, the biggest benefit Salah and Aubameyang draw from the half-space is that they are simply harder to mark there. If an opponent is playing a back four (and they usually are) then wing-forwards lined up in the half-space are between centre-back and wing-back. Who picks them up? Usually the full-back, but quick enough movements – and these two are certainly quick – can cause enough defensive hesitation to create space, and even if the full-back goes tight, the aforementioned overlap is on.

Essentially, playing out of the half-space both with and without the ball affords Salah and Aubameyang loads of options. It’s no coincidence that both men were signed by Jurgen Klopp (he brought Auba to Dortmund), the German coach is a big proponent of the half-space, as it ensures his heavy pressing football does not devolve into anarchy.

Of course, that’s the other thing. The half-space is an excellent framework, but the players within the system make it what it is. In terms of Liverpool and Arsenal, both sides have these supernaturally lethal wing-forwards that they, essentially, “feed” as the focal point of so many of their attacks.

Crucial to this is the no. 9 of the team.

How Lacazette and Firmino unleash Aubameyang and Salah

You can’t have a goalscoring wing-forward operate at his peak level if your no. 9 is also goal-hungry. The attack has to be structured properly for one player to end up getting most of the shots. So the no. 9 needs to be as comfortable facilitating and passing as they do shooting.

Roberto Firmino joined Liverpool as an attacking midfielder/winger type. Many thought of him as a no. 10, but Klopp saw in him the potential to play as the no. 9 for his side. Firmino isn’t really a “false nine” because he doesn’t drop into midfield and play from there as a primary mode of play, but it’s true that he is often not the target of the team’s final passes.

That’s Mohamed Salah.

Firmino’s ability to pass and control the ball combined with his supreme intelligence have made him an ideal fit for this role. Firmino can drop or play the ball back, but equally, he can swap places with either Mané or Salah should Liverpool want to confuse the opponent with some clever movement in the final third. This is his value to Mohamed Salah.

In recent games, the Brazilian has even started directly behind the Egyptian as Liverpool look to fully unleash their most lethal asset.

Meanwhile, for Arsenal, Alexandre Lacazette was known for Lyon as a goal machine. The Frenchman was deadly, especially from the penalty spot, and was Lyon’s main man. Luckily for Unai Emery, he was and is an incredibly intelligent forward, who has lethal instincts but is also happy to link play and feed his team-mates if they are in better chances.

He doesn’t drift as much as Firmino, but that’s fine because the way Arsenal build attacks isn’t quite as helter-skelter and relies on the creativity of Mesut Ozil cutting infield from the half-space and Héctor Bellerin (and to a lesser extent, the left-backs) roaring forward to provide width. The crosses come in, and guess who’s Mr. Right Place, Right Time?

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has scored with his last six shots: since such data was collected at the start of the 2003/04 season, no Premier League player has ever found the net with six consecutive efforts. Since his debut for Arsenal, Aubameyang has had 90 touches in the opponents’ box. Mohamed Salah? 186. Nearly 100 more!

This is perhaps the starkest example of the difference between these two play styles.

Salah is encouraged to dribble from the half-space, attacking defenders, playing one-two’s, and generally improvising. Meanwhile, Aubameyang moves out the half-space off the ball. His lightning pace allows him to lurk in seemingly harmless positions only to race into the box and be on hand to tap the ball home from simple cutbacks. That’s why he keeps scoring tap-ins; it’s not a defect or his inability to score “better” goals, it’s by design to make the most of his skill-set.

This is why Hector Bellerin’s value to the side is so massive. The Spaniard’s overlaps and subsequent cut-backs is the primary method of creating chances for Unai Emery’s side: Bellerin has provided 27 open play crosses in the Premier League this season with two resulting in assists for Aubameyang. Nacho Monreal is next on Arsenal’s list with 15 open play crosses.

And although Salah is the more ball-orientated wing-forward of the two, it should not come as a surprise to learn that a third of Andy Robertson’s nine assists for Liverpool have been for Mohamed Salah; an inversion of the Bellerin/Aubameyang dynamic.

Aubameyang and Salah both approach the wing-forward role, emerging from the half-space, quite differently. Salah – a ‘winger’ for most of his career – plays more on the ball with more horizontal movement, whilst Aubameyang – an out-and-out forward in his best period with Dortmund – often does his most dangerous movement off the ball.

That’s what makes their “battle” so compelling; two players in the same position doing the same thing better than literally everyone else but doing so in their own unique way. It makes for fascinating viewing and will be one of the most entertaining things to watch unfold in this coming Premier League season.

The post Aubameyang vs Salah: How Arsenal and Liverpool’s wing-forwards became the Premier League’s most prolific players appeared first on Squawka News.



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