Ozil - Do we need him?

[Power n Glory]

PnG, I know it's already been covered, but I am of the opinion that whilst Ozil is not essential, he's still a great player to have and is simply being tasked with a role that doesn't bear the fruits of his productivity.

He's not perfect, not by any means...he does go into hiding in some BIG games too, for me though...the major issue is that he simply doesn't have the required quality up top to put away the many chances he creates.

Wenger has absolutely failed to buy a top quality striker and he's had 100 of millions to spend over the past 3, what 4 seasons? he's not found anyone...it's ludicrous and a sackable offence.

That aside, I think Ozil doesn't score enough, Wenger did mention it last season and Ozil sniped that his job is to create, sure, his job is to also score goals, especially if he's playing that high up the pitch. Fabregas scored a lot of goals for us in his prime whilst creating a lot of assists, there is no reason why Ozil shouldn't be expected to do the same. Ozil should be comfortably hitting double figures every single season.

I hear you. Wenger really should have addressed the striker situation seasons ago because now it looks like we won’t find a striker capable of playing the solo striker role. Looking around Europe, most teams that don’t have a complete striker and two crazy creative goal machine wingers playing on either side of them play some sort of two striker system to compensate. The football we’re trying to play is too complex and intricate for the personnel we have. We have limited players Hence, why I think we need to change the system if this continues.

That's where I question Ozil and we’ll see if things get better now that we have more players capable of making runs behind the defence. Whether it’s possible to pick them out is another story. Stick Perez up front with Sanchez and Walcott as the wingers and that’s all Ozil should need to carve a defence up (in theory) I doubt that will be the case. We’re seeing Sanchez dropping deep and wide to get touches on the ball when playing up front. We’ve seen that with Perez and there were games last season early on where Walcott wasn’t touching the ball in the box either. It may take some adjustment time for that to happen. Seeing how quickly people are writing off Sanchez knowing his skill set has me even more worried about Perez.

Perez is a playmaker converted into a striker, only has one season up front to his name and used to playing with more space ahead of him and a strike partner. If Ozil and Sanchez can't find a rhythm, I worry about Perez and how much time he'd have up front. But I also think a player like Ozil should be able to find these players that have pace and make runs. They only drop deep and wide because the balls aren't being played. Maybe when Xhaka plays as well we'll see people making more runs when he's on the ball because they can anticipate him making that sort of pass.

There is much to ponder as the season plays out. For certain games, I honestly think he could set ourselves up with Xhaka and Elneny as a holding two and hit teams on the break by playing two strikers. It's not as if we're benefitting from playing a 3 man system when it comes to defending. But anyway.....we'll probably come back to this one when Ozil plays a blinder and when he has a stinker!

[Niall_Quinn]

It sounds to me like you are saying the world's best assister and chance creator is no good at assisting and creating chances.

I already explained it to you. The balls aren't going forward because Wenger is a massive, massive cock.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

Is this still going on?

[Kano]

Is this still going on?

There is a bit of a Cazorla box to box player thing going on here.

[Power n Glory]

It sounds to me like you are saying the world's best assister and chance creator is no good at assisting and creating chances.

I already explained it to you. The balls aren't going forward because Wenger is a massive, massive cock.

You did that on purpose.

To an extent yes. The system we have isn't helping matters but intuition has to come into it somewhere. I really don't what Wenger is saying and what he's not saying to the players. We hate the tippy tappy stuff and the way we often overplay but we don't have that problem with Theo or Sanchez. Theo hardly gets involved in the link up play and has been getting away with it for years now, whilst Alexis sometimes holds on to the ball for too long. Then we also have Wenger on record saying Ozil needs to score more goals. But regardless of Wenger's instructions, I would expect some common sense from these players. They're not robots and should be able to adjust as a situation develops.

[Power n Glory]

Passive aggressive bitches! Kano and Herb as usual.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

Passive aggressive bitches! Kano and Herb as usual.

Excuse me one second, i think i can hear a pot calling a kettle black

[Chippy]

I’ve seen a lot of talk of Ozil checking out early for the season and looking for the exit but do we really want him here if that’s the case? I’m usually on side with the players when it comes to this sort of issue but not in this case. I don’t think Ozil has done anything to warrant such high praise.

People point to what he did last season as proof of his quality but I’m still not convinced. After Christmas he checked out for the rest of the season. When I compare that purple patch/run of good form with other players, such as Ramsey 2013/14 season (34 games, 16 goals, 10 assists) or even Theo’s run (43 games, 21 goals, 16 assists), I’d take either of those guys replicating that form over Ozil’s 45 games, 8 goals and 20 assists.

Maybe he’s hung over from the Euros and needs to get up to speed but it’s disheartening to see us play games without Giroud and have all out pace up front and he’s not threading anyone through. His influence on the game has to extend beyond one decent pass. The chances he’s creating aren’t even killer through balls that sets us up with chance after chance. Heck, against Southampton the stats will say he created 4 chances but not one of those were clear cut one on ones. I really don’t rate him as a playmaker and won’t lose any sleep if he leaves. He’s not essential and I’ll have to see a massive improvement to think otherwise.

He is quality on his day, keep him. Simples!

[Power n Glory]

http://www.football365.com/news/its-...lem-not-giroud

It’s Ozil who is Arsenal’s problem
This Euros has given extra weight to the common understanding that there just aren’t that many out-and-out, give him half a chance and you expect him to score, top-class strikers out there. Even less that are realistically available, if any.

So love him or lump him this means Arsenal are almost certain to start another season with Giroud up top. But the thing is he’s quite noticeably had a pretty good tournament, and a lot of Arsenal fans will be lamenting this as proof for Arsene to keep him on as a good enough striker to mount a title challenge, further compounding the ever present Arsenal transfer policy frustation.

So how to solve this? I may be the only one looking at it this way but I dont think Giroud is the problem, I think Ozil is. Stay with me…

Don’t get me wrong, I love Ozil. I think he’s a magician. But I just don’t think he’s playing in the right position. The reason Giroud’s had such a good tournament is because he’s had Griezmann playing just off him, the perfect partner for him to do what he does best: hold up the ball, bring others into play and lay people through to score – generally being one of the least selfish strikers going, not the main focal point for scoring goals. Arsenal’s problem is that Ozil doesn’t compliment that, he can pick a pass like no other, but doesn’t look to drive forward and score goals, sometimes even annoyingly so when he seems to look to set up a teammate even when perfectly placed to shoot. This for me is a big part of why sometimes we just can’t break teams down.

So to get the most from Giroud we need a player more akin to Griezmann to play that role just off him, within the squad I’d say the most suited players would be Sanchez and Ramsey, who could really bring out the best in him, although the former seems to much prefer playing out wide and cutting in and the latter if he can carry his international form into the new season. Past that I’m sure there are plenty of names you could pull out of the transfer gossip lucky dip but while the list of those that are actually realistic is probabably quite short, it’s pretty clear that there are more viable attacking mids out there than there are strikers.

Now where does this leave Ozil? He obviously has to play. You could shunt him out wide, but could he be perfect in the role Santi played before his highly unfortunate injury? I’m sure many people will scoff at this but he’s got the perfect range of passing for the position, there’s been concrete stats showing him consitantly covering more distance than any other Arsenal player so we can put that lazy myth to bed and hell, I’ve even seen him get stuck in sometimes – not that tackling was ever a strong part of Santi’s game.

In my humble opinion I really think this would work well for Arsenal, have him deeper spraying passes about and let someone more suited to working alongside Giroud do his thing in the centre, if perhaps only when not playing against the teams where we’d really need a more robust Xhaka/Coquelin/Elneny holding pair.

In an ideal world for this to work (for the love of God please) we’d actually just buy Griezmann, but that’s probably wishful thinking…

Food for thought and partly what I've tried to explain on this thread.

[Niall_Quinn]

http://www.football365.com/news/its-...lem-not-giroud



Food for thought and partly what I've tried to explain on this thread.

All this says is that Wenger's incompetent. It's for the manager to utilise his players in the most effective manner and Wenger has been incapable of that for many years. Get rid of Wenger and many, many problems just fade away overnight.