“Arsenal, nothing personal,” said Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, in a message that quite beautifully made Sunday’s London derby all about the opposite. It was a pot that did not require stirring, but the line from Aubameyang playing in TV promotions this week has succeeded in stoking the flames among Arsenal fans ahead of the reunion with their former captain. “I’m back. I’m blue. I’m ready,” the Chelsea striker went on and, if you do take Aubameyang at his word that, for him, facing Arsenal isn’t personal, you can be assured his meeting with Mikel Arteta will be.
It can be hard to ignore the temptation to focus on the good, honest drama of a clash between a manager and an embittered former captain, even when Arsenal’s trip to Chelsea is also so much more. “There’s a narrative around him, I understand,” the Chelsea manager Graham Potter admitted. Resurfaced in the All or Nothing Amazon documentary, developed further in the emergence of leaked videos and fresh criticism, which in turn was met by thinly veiled digs, the fallout from the collapse of Aubameyang and Arteta’s relationship has so far been compelling ahead of its next chapter.
