Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang remains on target to break Didier Drogba’s record at Marseille after extending his remarkable goalscoring form at the Lique 1 club.

Auba demonstrated the sharpness and poaching instinct that have set him apart among the finest African goalscorers of his generation, scoring twice for OM against Nantes at Stade Velodrome; the brace took his tally for the season to 22 goals across Ligue 1 and continental competition.

Eight of those goals have come in Jean Louis Gasset’s five matches since taking the reins in Provence after his dismissal from AFCON hosts Ivory Coast during the course of the Nations Cup.

It’s an astonishing turnaround for the head coach, who has now overseen Aubameyang’s best goalscoring run since Sept. 2019.

“He’s the goalscorer, he is the player in the team,” Gasset said on Amazon Prime after the match. “In every team, there’s a player who makes the difference, in any team in the world.

“We need to protect him, and get him in the best place so that he can keep his energy in order to make the difference later.”

Aubameyang became the top scorer in UEFA Europa League history when he was on target against Villarreal earlier in the week — taking his tally to 33 goals in the competition, surpassing Radamel Falcao — and he can now realistically target Didier Drogba’s Marseille record of 32 goals in a single league season.

“I knew about him,” Gasset said. “I spoke to friends who had coached him, and I knew where he loved to play, where he likes to start from, and I took it from there.

“We’re building the team around him.”

Photo Credit: OM_English/ X