The Ozil Money Pit: Page 22 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

The Ozil Money Pit

Claudius

Ozil's untouchable. Everyone who tries to teach him a lesson ends up burning themselves. Don't fuck with the Mesut. Peak Mesut is better than anything else our team can conjure up. We desperately need to find a way to make Xhaka, Ozil, Torreira work. That should be the foundation. Everything else should fit around that. Hopefully that includes Aubameyang, Sokratis, Bellerin.

Ray

Ozil lacks consistency, we need more from him, Emery is just sending him that message.

Bold Tone

I like the message.
My point is it will only be effective if there is real competition.
Playing a misfiring Ramsey or lumbering Mkhi isn't scaring Ozil.
It was the same thing we had with Bellerin who was shit for 3 years till we signed real competition.

Claudius

Not sure if Ozil needs soft love or tough love. He definitely doesn't need teacher's pet approach that Wenger applied. But constantly benching him and acting like he's a man of straw might distance him.

Bold Tone

He has retired from international football so he would've been the only senior player in training with Emery that week.
Is it possible he slacked off in training and this was the punishment?

Qwiss

Probably had lunch with Emery and took the last breadstick.

TambourineMan

Bit strange for the comment to be made publicly. That said, everyone who watches us know that Auba and Ozil are our two tier one players and Emery needs to find a way to get the best out of them both. That's what he's paid the big bucks for.

Daz

He's not a fucking wizard though. He's given Ozil ample opportunity to show that he can perform consistently as required in this system. No doubt he is well aware of Ozil's best and worst performances over past seasons also. At some point you've got to accept that Ozil may never again perform for us at his highest level consistently enough. Emery obviously feels like he can't rely on him to perform how he wants/needs in these kinds of games. For me it's up to Ozil to prove him wrong. I highly doubt he will, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

Mirth

It's a fair point but it's undermined when Ozil is replaced by Mkhi who is half the footballer

Claudius

Not necessarily.
James on Arsecast this week made the point that Pep went after Aguero, benching him and favoring the inferior Jesus. That was possibly a way to show that no man is greater than the team, even though he was sacrificing potentially the best player in the league to make a point.

Ozil needs to make himself indispensable. He has not shown himself to be so since his first season here. If he does not shape up, I don't see why we shouldn't transfer list him. 15m pounds a year is a lot of money.

Jed

Gotta say Emery's handling of Özil so far is top notch. No time for egos or slackers. Love it.

Daz

Mirth wrote:
It's a fair point but it's undermined when Ozil is replaced by Mkhi who is half the footballer

I certainly agree that Mkhi is in no way the answer to the Ozil enigma. The answer is looking more like a similarly talented but more consistent/impactful player (though not necessarily another number 10). Getting such a player will be a big challenge though.

Mirth

Claudius wrote:
Not necessarily.
James on Arsecast this week made the point that Pep went after Aguero, benching him and favoring the inferior Jesus.

True, but Jesus actually started his Man City career extremely well - I think he was averaging a goal a game?

Herbas

I don't think Ozil will respond to this treatment in any significant way. Has he actually ever really suddenly changed his work application after being challenged by others? Many expected him to be extra-motivated after summer debacle with Germany NT, using it as a chance to show doubters that they will miss him if he's not there anymore. But nothing really changed in his game, more of the same really.

In any way, I'm completely fine with how Emery handles the situation. Hate when big names are kept on the pitch no matter what.

Anzac

Daz wrote:
Mirth wrote:
It's a fair point but it's undermined when Ozil is replaced by Mkhi who is half the footballer

I certainly agree that Mkhi is in no way the answer to the Ozil enigma. The answer is looking more like a similarly talented but more consistent/impactful player (though not necessarily another number 10). Getting such a player will be a big challenge though.

Ozil is still one of the best in the game when it comes to being effective in the final 3rd, and has the record at both club and international levels. Thing is that in Emery's style we don't actually need that level of specialised craft in that area of the pitch because we don't rely upon playing through the middle anywhere near as much. Whereas under AW we needed a locksmith to unlock the defence in terms of passing talent, nowadays the cut back from the by-line is our new king in terms of how we look to create scoring opportunities, and we don't need the same level of specialisation at CAM.

As for the bit in bold, I wonder if there is a temptation to look at playing Lacazette behind PEA?

Burnwinter

Tell me what you think about Mesut Özil, and I will tell you who you are.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/nov/30/mesut-ozil-dilemma-arsenal-spurs-unai-emery

Quite accurate. The Özil debate is somewhat skewed by the social effect of voicing opinions about Özil.

Qwiss

He's just a really weird player to try and figure out. His underlying stats are always far better than his actual output. People used to blame this on our strikers but thats not really a viable excuse any more. I think he's just too different from other players to really judge him by ordinary standards and stats.

Whatever his downsides anyway who is gonna start ahead of him? I think he and Mhki aren't great when used together so there is only one winner from the 2.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

He's such a weird player. He and Mkhitaryan are largely pointless these days.

I'd honestly rather we throw our eggs into the Smith Rowe basket from now (until/unless we are actually going to sign a top wide player).

goon

Qwiss! wrote:
His underlying stats are always far better than his actual output.

I may be wrong but I don't think that's true this season. His touches, passes, chances created etc. stats are all down. Ironically his goal scoring stats are probably the most impressive.

He's always been hot and cold but I think this season he's struggling with his positioning on the pitch and role in the team. In fairness to him though, that goes for all of our forwards bar maybe Iwobi and Laca.

Qwiss

I just heard on a fantasy football thing that was among the players with the top shots in side the box and it got me thinking about his chances created stats, etc and seems like he just doesn't match output with the stats for some reason.

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