Richard Jolly says Mesut Ozil, once an indulgence, has now become indispensable for Arsenal. Can Tottenham stop Europe's assist king?
The contrast was stark and significant. The previous time Arsenal lost to Bayern Munich,
Mesut Ozil was both scapegoat and source of defeat. He was the Gunners’
Galactico who had shrunk from the big occasion, seeing a limp penalty
saved and making half-hearted attempts to track back on the left flank
when Wojciech Szczesny’s sending-off meant he became an auxiliary winger. That was February 2014.
On Wednesday, as Arsenal were eviscerated, Ozil was oddly
excellent. Oddly because this was not the Ozil of stereotype, the
shrinking violet, the £42.4 million personality vacuum. He was creative,
sending Santi Cazorla clear on goal with a delightful pass – Manuel Neuer denied the Spaniard – and playing a part when Olivier Giroud
scored. A seemingly passive figure tried to change destiny, albeit with
illicit methods, by using his bulked-up body to shoulder in Nacho Monreal’s cross. It brought a booking, rather an equaliser.
Yet the 5-1 thrashing, Arsenal’s joint heaviest European defeat,
was not Ozil’s fault. A man who has seemed to exist purely to polarise
opinion should, for once, escape censure. The great Ozil argument, a
constant over the past two years at the Emirates Stadium, may never be
resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, but the believers have had a spell
to savour.
October surely ranked as Ozil’s best month in an Arsenal shirt.
It is altogether harder to level the accusation that he goes missing in
major matches. Goals in wins against Bayern and Manchester United were defining contributions to decisive games. A luxury player suddenly seemed essential.
An aesthete has acquired an added appeal to the realists. When
Ozil arrived at Arsenal in 2013, to a soundtrack of regret from his
friends and fans at Real Madrid,
the salutary statistic was that he had recorded the most assists in
Europe’s top five leagues over the previous five seasons. Now the
influence his admirers have long insisted he has is reflected in the
figures: he has created the most chances in any of the continent’s five
major divisions this season. His tally of Premier League assists, nine,
is 50 percent better than anyone else’s.
There have been six in the last four league games alone, many
beautifully weighted passes from a player who seems to have peripheral
vision. A stylist has shown substance. Think back 18 months to Jamie Carragher’s
blunt declaration: “Some of these No. 10s get away with murder.” They
were accommodated at the expense of the second striker, a footballer who
would be judged by his goal tally. Carragher’s point was that
playmakers have a responsibility to be productive. Ozil’s, albeit
injury-hit, league campaign last year brought a mere four goals and five
assists. In contrast, David Silva’s yielded 12 goals and seven assists. One languid artist’s value was beyond question. The other’s was not.
Ozil had prospered for swathes of the first half of the 2013-14
season and the second part of the 2014-15 campaign, but memories of a
bleak 2014 –for club if not country – prevailed. He still scores too few
goals and there have been times when, given the surfeit of
attack-minded central midfielders in Arsene Wenger’s squad, it has been
legitimate to wonder if he even merited a place in Arsenal’s strongest
side. Not now. Now Mauricio Pochettino’s North London derby team-talk could be comparatively simple: stop Ozil.
It is no easy task. The elusiveness of one of football’s
wandering souls gives the impression he is a drifter, devoid of purpose,
rather than a footballer who roams in search of pockets of space with
the cleverness that led Philipp Lahm
to brand him the most intelligent player in Europe. But Ozil has
committed that most heinous of crimes in the eyes of English audiences:
having poor body language.
Arsenal's Mesut Ozil was one of the team's better performers in the humbling at the hands of Bayern Munich - PA Photos
The more dynamic, more direct, more prolific Sanchez seemed a
more natural fit for the Premier League, a blur of perpetual high-speed
motion with an enviable goals tally. Ozil has represented an enigma, the
apotheosis of Arsenalness, the passer without the end product, all
technique and no physique, the slight figure who could be overrun and
overcome, the man who, in our clichéd attachment to the notion of sport
as war, you wouldn’t particularly want alongside you in the trenches.
Yet, their decidedly mixed Champions League form
notwithstanding, Arsenal are not as brittle as their reputation
suggests. Ozil, supposedly the ineffectual weakling or the man for the
small occasion, has revealed a concealed aptitude for the grander
stages.
And it is salient to remember that his fan club includes a demanding pragmatist, in Jose Mourinho, perhaps the most respected player of his generation, in Lahm, and the most potent, in Cristiano Ronaldo.
Ozil is not merely a footballer who seemed a manifestation of
Wenger’s obstinate capacity to persevere with his favourites. Now an
indulgence is indispensable. Ozil is Arsenal’s Renaissance man. He was
one of the Premier League’s two outstanding players in October. That the
other - Jamie Vardy, the former non-league roadrunner turned goal
machine – appears his opposite is somehow very Ozil-esque.
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