Arsene Wenger says he doesn’t give Mesut Ozil any leeway in his defensive duties just because the player’s strengths lie when he is in possession of the ball.
Criticism has been directed at the Germany international in recent days after his poor marking against Everton allowed Ashley Williams to head home a late winner at Goodison Park. His perceived unwillingness to pressure Manchester City players in the subsequent defeat at the Etihad has also been pored over by both the press and fans.
As you might expect the boss was quick to defend his player from being made a scapegoat, all the more so when one of the journalists at his pre-West Brom press conference highlighted that he’s currently ranked level top with Alexis Sanchez in final third ball retrieval statistics.
“It’s difficult for me to come out on individual players,” said the boss of the negative headlines.
“I have that debrief with the players themselves. To be absolutely fair, I did not hear or listen to all the criticism we got after the game. We have to accept that, we have to live with that.
“People analyse and have their opinion, I think that’s normal and we have to respond. Mesut Ozil is an important player, he’s a big player and the big players always respond to the criticism on the pitch.”
He added: “No. I don’t give him any leeway. He has to do his job like anybody else and usually he does it well.
“Where you are right, is that his main strength is when we have the ball. He suffers more when we don’t have the ball. At City he suffered more than others because we did not have the ball enough. Unfortunately, if you want the ball you have to win it back.
“He [Ozil] is a guy that works a lot harder than people think. His body language goes a bit against him sometimes. It’s true that we’re a team that wins the ball high up very well with Sanchez and Ozil – that means he does his part of the job very well.
“Where I agree, is that at City we had a deficit with winning the ball back in the middle of the park. When you do not win the ball back immediately, we suffered after to win it back a bit deeper. That’s certainly what people highlighted in our game.”
If there is a positive, Arseblog News reckons all this negativity surrounding Ozil should allow us to knock £20 off his weekly wage demands. And that means more cash to spend on sweet treats and novelty doggy jumpers for Atom and Humber. If that’s not enough to persuade Alexis to stick around then we’re screwed.
Nobody is doubting his talent but he doesn’t match others in his defensive duties.
His lack of defensive effort towards the Everton winning goal was simply unacceptable. No excuses.
People that want ozil to leave are the same people that wanted chris samba to be our CB.
I still want Samba….
To be fair though at that point in time they just wanted Sambady.
Samba > Squillaci
Samba > Djourou
Also, it’s not like we had the money to buy a Thiago Silva/Sergio Ramos/Gerard Pique. Don’t see why not (at the time)
Yeah, the ball passed over his head and he doesn’t have the height of a basket-ball player! SHAME!
A) He didn’t bother jumping and was looking the other way B) He’s the same height as Ashley Williams who won the header. It’s not Santi Cazorla vs Peter Crouch. He really should have made more of an effort just to put pressure on Williams.
He was turning back even when the ball was still in the air. I know he can’t win a header against Williams, but he could have just challenged him and prevent that free header.
Talking about Wenger’s style, former Arsenal captain Gallas said the following: Sometimes at training, if a player is not putting a lot of efforts and you start asking him to do so, Wenger never intervene, Wenger never backs you for that. We are 9 points behind because our players are often allowed to give less than maximum performance. In previous years during matches where we face elimination in CL, you see the performance our players give to win the game but come a little short ? Why don’t they give such performance in PL even knowing Chelsea went 9 pts… Read more »
i agree with this comment. wenger is somehow directly or indirectly responsible for the lack of effort from some players. think about how long we played with walcot tracking back or ox loosing balls in our own half carelessly and ofcourse ozils reluctance to defend. it was always suicide to play these players . yet they never changed or or there was not enough push from wenger. i hate to say it but look at spurs.. before pochettino came erikson and lamela were a liability and now they are part of a team who hunt for balls intensly
Wenger is trying to convince Ozil to sign a new contract at the moment so I can understand why has come out with the comments defending him.
Lots of negative comments about Ozil recently and Wenger is protecting him like lions in the zoo.
Admit it that you commented just to use lions in zoo.
Every other ‘animal’ in this ‘zoo’ is equally protected by Wenger
Ozil would be a fool to leave. As good as he is offensively, not many other top managers would allow him to get away with such a low work rate and defensive commitment he has had in the last two games. On the flip side any team in the world would happily take Alexis.
As poor as Ozil has been in these two games I would be delighted with him signing on as long as he doesn’t ask for Pogba wages.
What managers? Low, Mourinho? Özil played/plays under these coaches and they are/were happy to have him… defensive duties or not…
I wonder how other offenseive players fare in this area?
Without the media, who have always hating him, showing ten seconds of the City game or invented his fault on the Everton corner (Kos, Gabriel, anyone?), i do wonder who would have noted this. And not one word about his races and when he dispossessed a City player, just for the referee to whistle an imaginary foul…
I don’t know what is invented about Ozil walking away when Williams is jumping for the winning header. Yes, Ozil should have never been in the position of marking Williams, but a professional cannot walk away instead of at least trying to put him off from getting a free header. Mourinho bought a young Ozil and didn’t pay him over 300k a week and pay a huge fee for him. Would he pay that kind of money now at United considering his current tactics? I don’t think so. Some top teams might have him but apart from a couple not… Read more »
ozil is only good if the team is having posession , so playing ozil will never be a problem for germany as right now they are the best team in the world. they will control possession in every match. arsenal undestandably is not as dominating as germany against every team. when we have possession he will be world class but without it we will be playing with essentialy onr man down in midfield. dont know much about ozils time in madrid , but from what i can recall he had issues against mourinho and thats why ultimately he sold ozil.… Read more »
Um, wrong:
1. Mourinho didn’t sell Ozil; he was sold after Mourinho was gone and Ancelotti was manager.
2. The current form of Hazard, and Mkhitaryan’s form last year (he’s starting to look pretty decent this year too), surely shows the folly of the idea that such “luxury players” aren’t worth it or at least can’t be accommodated in hard working, disciplined teams (last I checked, Conte’s Chelsea and Tuchel’s Dortmund are hard working and disciplined teams, who also do their fair share of pressing).
You’re right. The problem is not just ozil. None of our attacking midfielders relish or Excel at the defensive side of their job. Theo Walcott and either the Ox or Iwobi, all of them are below average in their ability/intensity when playing without the ball. I sincerely believe that with someone like Klopp/Tuchel/Guardiola, they’d at the very least try harder.
Thought it was very interesting that ozil had highest pass and completion rate against city yet many limited fickle fans scream he was missing. Coq and xhaka had awful pass and completion rate though were much more involved apparently. Not excusing his lack of a tackle at times. Some folk think that bergkamp played every game setting the world alight. There were many games that I remember when we lost and Dennis was not involved at all. Just saying.
Dennis Bergkamp is an Arsenal legend. Ozil isn’t.
Is the proof that Ozil didn’t go missing in the two games the fact that Bergkamp also went missing sometimes? If someone goes missing there is no shame in pointing out facts. No one is saying is he is rubbish and we should sell him. He’s great and I am sure most fans would absolutely want to keep him.
Absolutely just highlighting that if going missing was having more pass’s than any other Arsenal player then god knows where the rest where
The comfort with mediocrity has become endemic we don’t realize it anymore! My expectation of Arsenal players are much much higher. A little flair to gloss over an obvious deficiency. Wake up!
I don’t buy this for a second. For all his faults, almost any top team would take Özil.
All top teams nowadays press high and expect all their offensive players to win the ball high. Don’t forget when he first came Ozil was played on the wing to fit our system but he was just too poor defensively to play there. We then changed our formation from playing with three central midfield to create a number 10 position so that he wouldn’t have as many defensive duties. Unlike most other creative players in the league Ozil is never shifted out wide for this reason. I’m not saying he isn’t great at what he does. He absolutely is and… Read more »
You don’t have your facts right. He played as a no 10 as soon as he arrived at Arsenal. The only time Wenger consistently shifted him wide was at the start of his second season, in autumn 2014, to accommodate Ramsey and Wilshere in the team in a midfield three. He moved away from this formation, but I’m not sure it was just because of Ozil’s defensive frailties (there were probably a lot of reasons, including Ramsey and especially Wilshere struggling for form and fitness, and Mesut also being injured for several months and only coming back in the new… Read more »
(finishing my thought since the site was screwing up my last comment): with a mobile center forward (rather than Giroud) Ozil would also have greater freedom to roam centrally in space vacated by Sanchez, so he wouldn’t be marginalized on the wing. For a flavor of how this 4-3-3 formation could work, look at Klopp’s Liverpool, with Firmino central and Coutinho (the closest they have to a no 10) and Mane (a bit more direct, like Theo) starting on either wing. Or, in a slightly different formation, Chelsea at present: Hazard left, but with lots of freedom, Costa central, and… Read more »
You are right he did play left and centre intermittently in the first season. And then played left for the second season. Ozil only really started playing at high standard last season though when he played no 10. Undoubtedly this is his best position. He is not great playing out wide as his skills are very different to Hazard’s which are pace, sprinting and running past several players and in addition to not being the best defensively. I can’t remember the last time he was played out wide and there must be a reason for that other than partnerships. If… Read more »
I do agree with you that Ozil is not the reason we lost, although he was one of the contributing factor. He is one of the very top earners of the club and rightly so as he is one of our best players. He is allegedly demanding a huge pay increase. I just expect him to show the commitment to the club and the fans that he is expecting from the club. Not every one has it in themselves to work and fight as hard as Alexis does, but he could definitely show more than he has shown this last… Read more »
City? No. United? No. Chelsea? No. Liverpool? No. Barcelona? No. Real Madrid? Maybe. Bayern? Maybe.
No one outside these teams could afford higher wages than we could pay him.
Barca might too, in fairness. And Juve/PSG could probably afford his wages
Where would he play in Barca? Would he be important enough for Barca to play him that sort of money? Agreed on PSG, not on Juve.
Where are you getting your evidence that proves none of the top teams in England would want him? It’s complete speculation, but for my money, they would all be interested, and, with the exception of Liverpool, would all be able to pay him top wages.
If you are comfortable with mediocrity. Sure! We will win it next year! Ypippeee!
You say due to his defensive performance in the last 2 games but surely the sample should be the last 16 games to show what a manager may or may not put up with. If his contribution had been the same in every game this season then you would have a point but it’s not, so it’s bollocks.
His defensive contribution is questionable at the best of times. But we can live with it because of how much he gives us offensively, which most of the team is a lot. I liked how Tim Stillman put it in the Arseblog we usually play with 2.5 midfielders and we can live with that because of what he offers us going forward. When it drops further from there then we have a problem, especially if it is against a big team. These two games are no anomaly, in games against bigger teams where we have less of the ball his… Read more »
He’s averaged 10.6km per 90 mins this season (similar stats last year), which is more than most in our team. The time he spends creating space for himself goes unnoticed by the camera as well as the fans. But to claim that Ozil is a lazy player is actually extremely far from the ground truth.
How much of that is spent when we have the ball and how much without? He’s not lazy offensively but he can be when we don’t and have to win it back
Honestly that tells us little.
Knowing his High-Intensity Distance Covered and repeated sprints would give us a better idea of his work rate.
It’s a tough one. The lad undoubtedly has a very rare talent. He is however something of a luxury player. The question is, can we afford to have such a player when we tend to have a rather soft underbelly in any case. I suspect the answer is that yes, we can, in most games. But maybe there are some games in which we cannot afford to have him, at least not for the full game when it is clear that the match is going in a direction that does not suit his talents. I agree with others who say… Read more »
Yeah we could have subbed him off to Elneny against City to try to retain the control of the match when it was evident that City took control of the match and Ozil was out of energy. It is a type of substitution more rutheless managers like Pep and Mourinho do. Not blaming Wenger though, he really tries his best to keep a good relationship to his players, thinking long term in every move he makes. Subbing Özil off while trying to keep him at the club would have been a bit contradictory. On the other hand it could have… Read more »
All footballers in any top league are on ridiculous money already, It’s the level of ridiculousness that differs.
Alexis is magic. but he’s beginning to develop this annoying habit of over dribbling when he can release the ball quicker, or looking for super complicated passes when there are simpler, more productive options. it’s getting annoying. it’s one of his biggest weaknesses that someone should talk to him about.
every player, even Messi, has their weaknesses, they just need to identify them and try their best to improve upon on them.
Ozil will come good, if we continue to trust and support him, rather than shred him to bits.
Can’t we just tell and show sanchez that they eat dogs out in the East? As a dog owner there’s zero chance he’ll go
*dog lover
He says he wants to be the ‘one of the best players in the world’ and he knows he can’t achieve that playing in China. He may go there when he’s in his 30s but for the moment we’re safe from that issue (although I’m sure his agent is using that to turn the salary screw…).
Agreed. Can’t see him going to China at this stage and with his ambitions. Not even if they doubled the money. I’m more concerned over losing him to clubs like Man U, Chelsea or Man City if they show him enough money combined with winning potential. OK, strike Man U from the winning category but the other two are definitely contenders.
Forget China (Sanchez will be miffed they only offered him £400,000pw but Oscar gets £500,000 pw on top of £60m fee) but what if Manure or C£ty or PSG came knocking with £100m fee – would our USA owner turn that down?
We may want to keep him “at any price” but is that going to influence the club that sold RVP, Nasri, Thierry, Overmars, Clichy when the price was right?
The knock-on for the rest our wage bill could be disastrous if we go mad with him.
Never say never but can you see any team cough up 100 million quid for a 27 year old? But I do share you concern that any of those teams would be contenders if he decides his wage demands are met.
Let’s assume he goes. What then? Who replaces him? Do we stick with what we have or do we buy someone new? And who?
Most of those players were sold because we needed the money then. Not such a factor now, but yes he could still move in Europe.
Can Atom have the red jumper and the green one for Humber…
It’s easy to blame ozil but i thought in the 2 defeats xhaka was awful he kept giving the ball away when we were on top against Everton and wanted an age on the ball encouraging a couple of tackles Everton won which in turn got the crowd going which transferred to the pitch he missed tackles again against city couldn’t pass the ball 10 yards and looked out of his depth I’ve no doubt he’ll come good but he looks like he’s struggling for confidence to me
I think it’s a combination: Gabriel, although usually very good in a purely defensive role, does not move the ball quickly; it seems clear that in the second half City tried to force us to play to him. Xhaka certainly has a tendency to invite a press by dwelling on the ball (given some time, of course, he is a brilliant passer). Coquelin is not sure enough with the ball to provide an immediate outlet for the other two, and Ozil does not come back quickly enough to help him; of course, if he did, we would have a hole… Read more »
Ramsey moving the call quickly from the back? *laughing* Great analysis!
Santi moves the ball quickly from the back; Ramsey shows in the middle (as distinct from Theo). That’s what “respectively” means.
Tactically we are set up to be offensive when we play the top teams and they play the closing down game we fall short on getting the ball, but wenger doesnt change the philosophy either he’s too stubborn or reluctant to either way we become inadequate to be competative cant seen him changing his ways, he always states he picks the team who he thinks will win the game, which is defended after a defeat by the referee or linesman, teams know how to play us were still too one dimensionable, it dont take managers long to work out our… Read more »
All this “winning the ball back” needs the context of why; We kept giving the ball away. Keep possession better and the problem goes away. Need to work on retaining possession when opposition deploy high press well.
That’s not how football works. Both sides are just as important, winning the ball back never goes away as no team keeps the ball forever. Even Barca’s Guardiola. As great as they were at keeping the ball, one of the things that seperated them from other great possession teams is how they swarmed the opponent and won it back high as quickly as they could.
We have one of the best midfielders in the world in our team and some people want him out the door because of a couple of shoddy games. Since when did so many Arsenal fans turn to Michael Owen levels of stupidity regarding Özil?
since about a couple of weeks ago, up in Liverpool, by the looks of it.
He reminds me of Carmelo Anthony of the new york knicks. Talented offensively refuses to work on defense. You cannot, i repeat cannot win with such player as your marquee player. When the going gets tough he puts his head down. You never see him uplifting anyone one the pitch when we are under seige. He is 28? and is not going to change
Is there a way to downvote this comment multiple times?
All the amazing things Özil has done during his time with our club magically wiped from memory after two crap games.
We don’t play a formation that can accommodate Ozil away from home against the tougher teams. If you play four at the back and two wide men you need the remaining midfield to be competitors that won’t get bullied. Ozil reminds me of the young fabregas in 2004-2005, who at that time couldn’t compete.
Yes, brilliant. By all means, against all the other top teams, let’s stick one of our two best attacking players (arguably two best players, full stop) on the bench. We’re lucky the arseblog comments section isn’t in charge of picking the team.
Alternatively, we decide it might be quite handy to have Ozil on the pitch and if you’re right about the problem with our formation (and I think you largely are) we play a 4-3-3 in tough away games, with Ozil as one of the attacking 3.
But by all means, let’s focus on comparing one of our best players to a 16 year old Fabregas because he just “can’t compete”.
To be fair our record away against big teams is so abyssmal we might as well pick the formation for those teams. It couldn’t be too much worse
Ozil has been fantastic this season. But the issue has always been that when the team is purring, he is superb. When the team needs digging out of a hole, he is not up for the fight. Alexis will run himself to the ground if we cannot find others to shoulder the burden and fight. IMO, Ramsey is Ozil’s surrogate. Rambo has his own issues and has been less than stellar of late but he keeps getting juggled around the squad where his best position is in the hole attacking the final third. Its his instinct. Should Ozil not show… Read more »
It’s not the body language for me, it’s the aerial challenges and how he doesn’t even bother trying with them he just let’s the opponent win the header or at most he will duck and stick his arse into the opponent and give away a foul. Cheers mate.
Ozil has more talent than any other player in the premier league but is he the best player in the league? Nowhere near in my opinion, world class players dominate games and are unplayable,when have we seen Ozil do this? World class players turn up for big games and make the difference,Ozil doesn’t. I just wish he wasn’t such a coward
Was it just me but i’m sure I saw some one who looked a lol like Ozil chip the keeper , round two defenders before passing into a open net to secure a win at Lludergorets which in the end meant we won the group.
Obviously it can’t have been him given how he is such a liabilty.
That precision ball on a 3/4 turn where he appeared to not even look at the player he passed to when we played against Bayern Munich last year. What team with ambitions wants a player like that? Sell him!