Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is fighting a losing battle with Mikel Arteta

When Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang traipsed on for the final five minutes against Everton, with the frown of a man parachuted barefoot into a field of thorns, it didn’t require any great oracle to decipher what would happen next. And so, when Mikel Arteta ceremonially kicked off Arsenal’s weekend by publicly ostracising his captain for a “disciplinary breach”, any semblance of shock was at best subdued.

After all, there has always been something of a doomed cycle between Arteta and Aubameyang: a friction that grates during periods of bad form and culminates in one of Arteta’s schoolmasterish citations. It played out to a familiar tune in March, when Aubameyang was dropped for the North London derby, and it kept to much the same rhythm this weekend as Arsenal coasted past Southampton. But for all the volatile nature of the club’s recent progress, Aubameyang’s performances have been a source of steadier decline. And when considering the bottom line, the 32-year-old’s output worse than halved last season, from 22 league goals down to just 10, and four in 14 this campaign suggests that downturn is worryingly permanent.

That fact can, of course, partly be attributed to age. There is a weariness to Aubameyang now that wasn’t always there, invading his turn of pace and his instinct to seize on a single chance. He might have always been guilty of drifting in patches, but Aubameyang could always be relied upon to burst into life at any moment and strike fear into a defence. Increasingly of late, it feels as though the snap and menace has been missing from his shots.

There are other factors at play, too, such as the burden of being captain or how a final contract might have appeased his hunger, even if only in the subconscious. But at the root of it all, there’s a more simple clash of ideologies. Arteta and Aubameyang are by most measurements almost polar opposites: a rigid authoritarian who preaches “non-negotiables” and a somersaulting striker with a lightning bolt shaved into his hair. It makes for an odd leadership couple, effectively forced together by Granit Xhaka’s flash of anger, who have never really coaxed the best from one another. Perhaps now, those ill-fated seams are starting to fray beyond repair.

After Arsenal’s 3-0 victory, Arteta refused to be drawn on whether Aubameyang would remain club captain and offered no guarantees that he would return to face West Ham on Wednesday. It is the type of unnecessary off-field drama Arsenal’s manager has been desperate to stamp out since his arrival and, certainly, he must have presumed the worst had been quashed with Mesut Ozil’s acrimonious exit.

This situation hardly feels as irreparable, but there is a distinct tendency for Arteta to needlessly exacerbate some of these problems. In truth, there was little to gain from turning to Eddie Nketiah ahead of Aubameyang at Everton. It was an act of spite and only served to accelerate the sequence of events that led to Aubameyang being dropped. It by no means absolves Aubameyang, who has repeatedly fallen short on issues of punctuality, but this has hardly been an exercise in shrewd man-management either.

In Arteta’s grand unyielding blueprint, perhaps, it’s simply another necessary line in the sand. He has the full backing of the club’s hierarchy and cannot afford for his leadership to be challenged from below. There is a bright young core of players at the club now, who need to be pulled in one clear direction, and it can hardly be said that Arsenal suffered in Aubameyang’s absence on Saturday. Alexandre Lacazette is set to leave on a free transfer this summer, but always offers reliable vigour and determination, while Gabriel Martinelli’s direct runs and injections of pace are everything Aubameyang has lacked, albeit still in need of some finesse and fine-tuning.

Aubameyang can feel aggrieved, but regardless of the mistake or misunderstanding, he can hold few illusions over the fact that Arsenal’s future under Arteta can exist without him. He has 18 months left on his contract, but this summer the club will almost certainly pursue a new striker, with Dusan Vlahovic, Alexander Isak, and Dominic Calvert-Lewin among the optimistic targets, and right now Aubameyang is affording Arteta every reason to slowly phase him out. It might seem harsh, and it is fair to doubt the man making the decisions, but it’s hard to protest that logic. Aubameyang might have been Arsenal’s safety net for several years, but that won’t stop the floor eventually being ripped from underneath him.