Mesut coming out of his shell?: Page 122 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Mesut coming out of his shell?

marv3llous

Actually Özil and Alexis hold something extra. It would look incredibly bad on the club if we're forced into selling them two just because we cant convince them of our ambitions. They are supposed to be the proof of our newfound financial power and ambition.

flobaba

Yes

But the club doesn't really operate that way: As long as they believe we have what it takes to get top 4, every player is fungible

Burnwinter

I don't think Özil is that likely to be off, to be honest. It's far more likely to be Alexis if either. Özil has specifically mentioned "next season" at Arsenal in recent statements.

goon

flobaba wrote:
Yes

But the club doesn't really operate that way: As long as they believe we have what it takes to get top 4, every player is fungible

Not sure about that, we haven't sold a key player since 2012.

We've also gone out of our way to keep a relative nobody like Theo here so I don't think recent trends suggest we'd give up on guys like Alexis and Mesut without a fight.

Ray

We haven't had anyone worth selling since 2012, apart from Ozil and Sanchez, tbh I expect Ozil to be off this summer.

goon

That's not true, folks here wouldn't be crying about Ramsey and Koscielny inevitably leaving a while back otherwise. Then again people on here were worried that Sanchez was going to leave 2 months after he signed.

Temo

Yep, it'd be frankly embarrasing for Ozil to want out in our post-scarcity era. Only recently Wenger came out pretty catagorically and said we don't need to sell like we did before.

I personally don't think losing him will be as bad as people think, though. There's alot about his game we have to comprimise elsewhere with. Things like finishing, meaningful pressing, heading and arguably dribbling all unbalance us in the league. I also prefer players who just get on with it and man up after being roughly tackled for example rather than moaning at the ref when he doesn't give a soft foul. Combined with his tame tackling think it sets a tone of weakness. That's something personal to me, though.

However, there is certainly the fear of losing the pulling power of a name like his and it being a pretty big factor in both getting and keeping top players in.

Burnwinter

He's just created the most chances for any single player in a Premier League season. Letting him go would be fucked, and far worse than letting Sánchez leave.

Rex

I don't see it. What are you guys getting so up in arms about with that interview? Of course he isn't going to deal with his contract now; it is, surely, all about the Euros for the players who are going. The man basically said negotiations will take place after the Euros, which is very reasonable in my book considering he has two years on his contract. He then gave an honest assessment of our season, for the second time. I have absolutely no problems at all with what he said, and I don't for a second believe he will be allowed to leave this summer even if he wants to, which is itself debatable. If he chooses not to sign a new contract, then as far as I'm concerned it is on Arsenal for not being ambitious enough.
All of that goes for Alexis as well btw.

Temo

Burnwinter wrote:
He's just created the most chances for any single player in a Premier League season. Letting him go would be fucked, and far worse than letting Sánchez leave.

The degree to which we funnel our play through him, the fact that we've been missing our two next best playmakers through injury all season, that he basically takes all our set pieces and that he does everything in his power not to shoot but to set someone else up accounts for Ozil's inflated stats enough for me. I don't see why he's exempt from taking any responsibility for our slow boring football, especially when he sees so much of it. Wilshere and Cazorla came back last week and injected pace into our passing, but ironically it was Ozil who sapped some of those moves of their intensity. To be fair to him, he's been playing with pretty average players all season, so if he doesn't dumb it down they aren't going to keep up with his imagination.

Oh and don't forget your going to get absolutely nill defensive contribution from him, so that's going to have be compensated by the front three, who also have to make up for his phobia of scoring.

mdgoonah41

if you ranked all of the issues with arsenal, anything to do with ozil would be like #37

he is the most talented player in the team. he is who you build everything around.

Temo

He probably is, but I don't think he's as suited to this team and the league in which this team plays as people think.

Qwiss

Burnwinter wrote:
He's just created the most chances for any single player in a Premier League season. Letting him go would be fucked, and far worse than letting Sánchez leave.

Letting either go would be a massive blow. For the shit by his standards season Sanchez had he still scored 13 league goals and had 5 assists. Which is pretty good, I think only Ozil and Giroud had more productive seasons for us.

jones

And Giroud only because of Villa and his playing every single minute.

Özil is the biggest talent but we're pissing his talent away with the jokers we field around him. Wenger should be chased out of the country if he sells him

mdgoonah41

if you look at our squad, you can identify a number of issues:

we lack a prolific goalscorer
we only have 1 legitimate winger
our centerback partnership is really poor
we lack midfield balance

ozil has nothing to do with any of those. the only scenario where it might make sense to get rid of ozil is if we decide we're either going to play 4-4-2 or 4-3-3. a number 10 doesn't really fit into either of those formations, though a 4-4-1-1 is basically a 4-4-2 and allows ozil to play as a support striker. even still, he is not the issue.

give him an aguero instead of giroud and he probably has at least 5 more assists this season.
build a better midfield behind him and he'll receive the ball in better positions and probably score more goals as well as providing his share of assists
build a stronger CB pairing and we probably don't drop as many points as we did and we're probably not even talking about ozil

those are 3 ready made solutions that would improve the squad as a whole. if you instead decide to sell the best player in the team, then you've now not solved the 4 issues above and you've created 3 more problems to try and fix.

Burnwinter

Temo wrote:
The degree to which we funnel our play through him, the fact that we've been missing our two next best playmakers through injury all season, that he basically takes all our set pieces and that he does everything in his power not to shoot but to set someone else up accounts for Ozil's inflated stats enough for me. I don't see why he's exempt from taking any responsibility for our slow boring football, especially when he sees so much of it.

You could look at it that way.

Or you could consider that since the inception of the Premier League there's been plenty of one man teams who funnelled nearly everything through a particular player, and still none of those players has ever created so many chances.

Özil is an incredibly good creator, we're not going to improve on him, we need to complement him with mobile goalscorers.

Gazza M

city have funnelled everything through silva since 2011, and he hasn't created as many goals and chances as ozil has this season either

Temo

Burnwinter wrote:
Temo wrote:
The degree to which we funnel our play through him, the fact that we've been missing our two next best playmakers through injury all season, that he basically takes all our set pieces and that he does everything in his power not to shoot but to set someone else up accounts for Ozil's inflated stats enough for me. I don't see why he's exempt from taking any responsibility for our slow boring football, especially when he sees so much of it.

You could look at it that way.

Or you could consider that since the inception of the Premier League there's been plenty of one man teams who funnelled nearly everything through a particular player, and still none of those players has ever created so many chances.

Özil is an incredibly good creator, we're not going to improve on him, we need to complement him with mobile goalscorers.

I don't think I've ever seen a team as reliant on one player while in possession. Wasn't there a 20 minute video posted the other day of each one of those 150 created chances? I'll be honest, I wasn't that impressed, I got bored half way through and turned it off. The most chances created stat is overstated for me.

It wouldn't surprise me if, much like it did the season after Henry left, our performances and results counter-intuitively take an upturn.

Ozil's more suited to taking an already elite team to a new level. With us he's doing something different. And that's why, through no fault of his own, I actually think he's not playing to his full potential. If we had a influx of world class players, Ozil would benefit more than anyone else.

Biggus

"An influx of world class players" 😆
My initial criticism of the Ozil purchase was not a criticism of the player himself, people were comparing him to Lord Bergy and I thought that was off the mark- He is not the type of player to "take the game by the scruff of the neck" but he is still an excellent creator, but Wenger was never going to compliment him with a strong supporting cast he bought Welbeck and kept Walcott ffs oh and Sanogo will surprise us.

Burnwinter

An "influx" of world class players might be asking a bit much, but an influx of one striker worth a damn seems reasonable, and would multiply Ozil's value.

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