Goals featuring a sustained period of passing and possession before going in are getting rarer due to teams preferring to counter attack into open space. That wasn’t the case for Arsenal today as they set the standard this season for passes before scoring.
Opta Joe tweeted to show the 20 passes before Aubameyang’s second goal against Watford today was a record for the season so far:
20 – There were 20 passes in the build-up to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s second goal for Arsenal against Watford – the longest passing sequence leading to a goal in the 2019-20 Premier League campaign so far. Rhythmic. pic.twitter.com/5yPy0uPmEy
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) September 15, 2019
Of all the teams to score like this you would expect it to be one of Arsenal, Man City or Liverpool so it’s not a great shock to see Arsenal being the side to do it.
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Astonishingly it also means that Aubameyang has now scored 37 goals in just 54 games in the Premier League since joining. Considering there were doubts about his attitude before moving to Arsenal it’s great to see him play so well and be so prolific in yet another league.
He’s now 30 so Arsenal will hope he continues to play this well for as long as possible. He now has 242 career goals and 300 should be achievable.
Of course the goal is still short of the beautiful Argentina goal vs Serbia in the 2006 World Cup which had 26 passes before being finished off, but it’s a pretty good benchmark for other sides to try and beat this season.
As long as they hold on to beat Watford, they will go level with Man City on 10 points after a solid start to the season.