Arsenal fan Piers Morgan has blasted the club’s decision to allow striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to join Barcelona on a free transfer.
The outspoken Morgan took to social media to criticise the Gunners and stated that it concluded what he believed had been a “terrible transfer window” for the club.
Aubameyang will move to the Camp Nou on an 18-month contract after the Gunners waived any transfer fee in order to make the move permanent.
The 32-year-old had flown to the Catalan capital earlier on Monday in a surprise development to both clubs as no agreement had been reached despite ongoing negotiations.
Aubameyang has not been involved in the last 10 matchday squads for the Gunners after a high-profile falling out with boss Mikel Arteta, whom Morgan is a vocal critic of.
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Aubameyang was ostracised by Arteta who instructed the club to offload the player this month as he continued to trim the first-team squad, with the player already stripped of the captaincy.
After the Spanish boss made that decision, Morgan blasted him on Twitter : "Shameful decision by Arteta. What a disgusting way to treat a man who went - with the club’s full knowledge & permission - to help his sick mother."
Arsenal were keen to facilitate Aubameyang’s permanent exit this month and waive a transfer fee due to the significant savings they will make on Aubameyang’s salary.
However, Morgan was not buying this angle and believes that not securing either a transfer fee nor a striking replacement represents bad business - initially posting a series of furious face emojis when sharing the news.
Morgan took to Twitter again to outline his frustration: "This is a terrible transfer window for Arsenal.
"One goal in the whole of January and we sell our best striker for NOTHING with no replacement. Madness."
Morgan’s admiration of Aubameyang is no secret, as he described the player as "one of the best strikers Arsenal has ever had" in a recent Sun column.
He wrote: “Mikel Arteta has taken weird pleasure in publicly humiliating our best, and best-paid, player, behaving like a particularly smug and intransigent disciplinarian headmaster punishing a naughty schoolboy for reasons that have never been fully explained - but at what benefit to the team?”
The striker scored 92 goals for Arsenal across 163 first-team appearances since his January 2018 arrival from Borussia Dortmund, including seven goals in 15 outings this campaign.
The former Dortmund striker is the sixth player to exit the Emirates this month following the loan exit of Folarin Balogun to Middlesbrough with Ainsley Maitland-Niles joining Roma on loan and Pablo Mari making a temporary move to Udinese, while Callum Chambers and Sead Kolasinac joined Aston Villa and Marseille respectively on free transfers.
Aubameyang’s exit leaves Alexandre Lacazette and Eddie Nketiah – both of whom are out of contract this summer – as the only senior strikers in Arteta’s squad.
