Anyone else here vacillate between thinking Ozil exemplifies the attacking football we aspire to play, or the soft mentality that holds us back?
Tactically, he is a difficult player to accommodate because he offers little goal threat or pressing/ball-winning, and needs to be played centrally to be at his best. Carrying a player like that (who offers little else if he's not assisting) just makes it easy to focus on marking him to shut off our supply lines. That's what happens in big games. The fact that he has, indeed, fucked off for the rest of the season like Keown suggested, isn't what a leader would do.
Then again, he might flourish under a different system with more opportunity to counterattack, and with more runners ahead of him. Spurs have gotten better football with an inferior player (Eriksen) in a similar position. But I just can't help think a player like Ozil should be the 3rd or 4th highest paid player at a club like Arsenal, behind the real leaders who win matches for us.
