Mesut coming out of his shell?: Page 74 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Mesut coming out of his shell?

Ricky1985

I agree with your point regarding our arrogance against so called inferior opposition, Rex, and I also agree that Wenger consistently fails to motivate the players when they don't find the motivation themselves. It's a real weakness of his in my view.

However, Özil was anything but poor in that first half yesterday, not with the ball anyway;

Controlled everything we did.

Rex

I agree. But football is, unfortunately, mostly played without the ball. Özil was poor when we didn't have the ball in the first half.

Also, I mentioned before that I don't think Özil was good enough offensively either in that first half. If you watch the clip above, then you will see that in the first half he didn't make a single run into the box where he received the ball, and overall he hardly got out of a jog. Playing at 10, I expect him to properly support the striker! He MUST make runs beyond the striker, he MUST get himself into the opposition box and in goal scoring positions. He did all that brilliantly in the second half, but he was far too relaxed and comfortable in the first half for my liking.

Defensively, using the clip above again, it is easy to notice that Özil didn't really have any defensive actions at all in the first half. He did nothing of note. In the second half, where Watford was a lot less in our half, he still managed to have several occasions where he worked hard defending deep in our half, and there were several occasions where he actively tried to pressurize opponents.

You all know I love Özil. He is easily my favorite player in the world. I still think he was utterly disappointing in the first half yesterday, and I expect better.

marv3llous

Meh, he could have been better, but that could be said by everyone else on the pitch as well. These things happen, he (and the team) turned it up by a notch in the 2nd half.

Mirth

Rex wrote:
You all know I love Özil. He is easily my favorite player in the world. I still think he was utterly disappointing in the first half yesterday, and I expect better.

If he is your favourite player in the world, you'll be aware that this is how he plays 80% of the time whether it's for Madrid, Germany or Arsenal. He can be a luxury player sometimes but he's also capable of making the difference just like that.

Rex

I know how he plays, thank you very much. He just turned 26 though, and I expect him to improve. He also usually makes more runs than he did in the first half yesterday. It was a really poor half of football from him, by his own standards.

y va marquer

He actually just turned 27, Rex :saint:

Rex

Aight. Point still stands.

Mirth

Some fan.

marv3llous

He can play shit by our judgement but he will still finish with an assist or two and that's all that matters. Been like this his whole career. He rarely "dominates" in a sense that we expect a player to dominate, he just provides the final pass 9 times out of 10 when you give him a chance to do it. Just as the top strikers will give you the finish.

y va marquer

Boateng on Özil, from an interview ahead of Tuesday's game.

He can be frustrating,” Boateng says, grinning. “I’ve known him for a really long time. And, well … let me say he doesn’t do this on purpose [here he mimes slouching, walking slowly, looking wan and pale]. It’s just his personality, it’s what he looks like. He doesn’t want to upset people. He always does his best, but he goes through some hard times like anybody. But if he has the confidence and he gets his rhythm he is one of the best players in the world.

“He has the eye for his team-mates, he can read when you have to run. He still can do so much better too, his talent is so high, as high as anyone. When you have a good team, the right team-mates, he can play great passes.”

Rex

Well, I always thought the talk about Özil and his body language was houseboat anyway. What lazy pundits would pick up on. I could watch him play football all day. That doesn't mean I don't get frustrated with him when I see he is playing in second gear.

Tactics

marv3llous wrote:
He can play shit by our judgement but he will still finish with an assist or two and that's all that matters. Been like this his whole career. He rarely "dominates" in a sense that we expect a player to dominate, he just provides the final pass 9 times out of 10 when you give him a chance to do it. Just as the top strikers will give you the finish.

Yep Ozil is a different kind of #10 than we are used to. He doesn't run games ala say, Silva. He's mostly a silent operator with excellent passing, decision making and movement. I think most people get frustrated by him (especially when we don't play well) because he's not a dominant player whose contributions you'll easily notice, it's only when you analyse the decisions he makes on the ball and the quality of his passing that you notice he's had a good game.

Bold Tone

Anyone who watches our games regularly cannot fail to see the role he plays although i understand other supporters and michael owen being completely ignorant as if you asked me about Adam Llalana, i couldn't even spell his name right.

Rex

That's not true in my case at least, despite myself having been critical of his first half the other day; for me, the biggest factor in our turnaround was easily Özil having a top class second half.

Honestly, I don't care about Özil having games where he is less influential; that happens to every player. However, I do expect him to be more active in our initial defending and with his runs offensively than what we saw in the first half at Watford. In fairness, I think he has mostly done just that since he came back from injury last season, and that is partly why his first half the other day was so frustrating for me.

Klaus

Needs to work on his passing (final pass in particular because it's just so disappointing), but he's getting there. He was at least 6/10 tonight.

flobaba

He was very good today. Top class.

y va marquer

A sarky note jars on a feel good night.

Özil put everything into tonight's game, how delighted was he to score?!

Klaus

It was a monster performance. I'm interested to see how much ground he covered. Bloke was absolutely spent in the final minutes; he could barely run on the final counter.

Coombs

One of the greats. Never going to get used to this guy actually playing for the Arsenal. Brilliant today.

est

A £42m performance from Mesut.

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