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…