At the end of the transfer period this winter things got a little crazy. Despite that, Aubameyangs draft to Arsenal was obvious in the end after he refused to come to the training, very much as Ousmane Dembele did when he wanted to force his transfer to Barcelona.
It is debatable if Aubameyang is the striker Arsenal needs right now. But as a matter of fact, he left Dortmund which leaves a wide gap that should be hard to bridge. Sure, when Lewandowski joined Bayern years ago people already wondered if Dortmund is able to find a replacement for him. After that they brought Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Saint-Etienne to Dortmund, for only 13 million Euros.
But the times have changed. At one side, the market and prices have changed tremendously. If 2013 was now, Aubameyang would've been definitely more than 13 million Euros.
At the other hand it isn't Jürgen Klopps Dortmund anymore and the club seems very chaotic at the moment. After sacking Thomas Tuchel despite a very good season regarding the assassination which happened earlier in 2017, they weren't happy with Peter Bosz as well. Journalists with good contacts to the management of Borussia said, they didn't think his way of playing football would be this "extreme". This seems like a joke after seeing Peter Bosz' Ajax in the season before which was quite an adaption of Johan Cruyffs "total football". Even more interesting is the fact they named Peter Stöger the new coach of Dortmund who is well known for a defensive style that really doesn't fit into Dortmund, the quality of the players or the claims Dortmund should have.
Dortmunds replacement for now is Michy Batshuayi. They really wanted Giroud to join Dortmund in the first place but the Arsenal striker didn't want to go to Dortmund at all. Now they transfered a loan fee of 1.5 million Euros to Chelsea and Batshuayi joins until the end of the season.
He is fast, has a great technique, can use both of his feets to score and on top is very fast. He scored 26 times for Chelsea in 62 Premier League matches. Despite that he never made it out of the shadow that other strikers in his teams casted. Neither at Chelsea where Conte preferred Hazard to be the middle striker, nor in the Belgish national team where Romelu Lukaku always was in front of him.
But the new striker is also said to be very flashy outside of the pitch - not in a positive manner. And exactly this could be the cracking point. His predecessor in Dortmund - Aubameyang - got in trouble with German media more than often because of his expensive sports cars, his extravagant way of clothing and uppish behavior in general like when he covered his face with a mask of his sponsor Nike during a goal celebration. At Borussia they have experience with people like that and this could may be a fate to the new top striker as well. Time will tell if he can make it in Dortmund.
Tonights game between Cologne and Dortmund will be interesting because of many reasons. Cologne is last of the table but they showed great effort during the last games. After they seemed relegated already after having only 3 points in the winter break, they won a few games back-to-back and now it's only three points for them to the "safe shore" as people say in Germany.
Also it's the first game for Peter Stöger back at his old club - which he left only hours before he joined Dortmund. In fact, his last game as the coach of Cologne is only 62 days ago.
Batshuayi is very likely to be in Dortmunds starting eleven tonight, we'll see how he does.