Quote Originally Posted by Özim View Post
It does when there's little time left in the transfer window and barely anyone available, he was high profile and he became available. I rate him very highly, however looking at it from a purely logical perspective, we didn't particularly need a player in his position.

Great signing, but not in a position you would have considered us weak in.

Hazard has been terrific though, but it has taken him a bit of time to get that good and I don't think we'll see the best of Ozil until next season. Still think we need to adapt our style of play to suit him, it wouldn't be a bad thing though, I think our slow paced football is dull as dishwater at times and an injection of pace would ramp up the excitement considerably.
I was under the impression he'd improve the other players around him but now it's looking like we'll need a lot more to get the best of him. Or maybe he just needs time to adjust. Our style of play keeps changing and it's hard to pin down what exactly it is we're doing. We've stopped pressing defensively, it looked like we played a higher line against Liverpool and the passing and movement has become more labored. We're not breaking quickly enough for counters and it's an old Wenger cliche but we lack sharpness.

I knew the fluidity of our play had taken a knock since losing Cesc and I'd say the quick and efficient play was a result of us not being able to string together endless passes like we used to. I wouldn't say it was a tactic to sit deep and then break. Not intentionally. When Ozil, Rosicky, Ramsey and Cazorla were on there game, that fluency came back and the players kept interchanging. It was more like the total football we used to play. But since the Christmas break that has gone out the window and we're struggling to string passes together and open teams up. We may need to go back to basics and focus on defence because I think that period of playing champagne football may have gone to the players heads and they're trying to replicate it all the time.