Quote Originally Posted by selassie View Post
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!