Yesterday, Mesut Ozil published a quote from Dennis Bergkamp, “When you start supporting a football club, you don’t support it because of the trophies, or a player, or history, you support it because you found yourself somewhere there.” My first reaction was mirth. It was clearly a shot at Emery and the Arsenal, taken at a weak moment after the club lost to BATE and looked like utter hash in the process. Maybe that’s not the way you reacted, maybe you’re one of those that got angry, fair enough to you. I’m always going to laugh at absurdity.
That said, I liked Arseblog’s post this morning, it was well thought out and expressed his feelings. Like him, I’m not an Ozil fan or an Emery supporter. But I had another little laugh when he had to say “I’m an Arsenal supporter” because it’s ridiculous at this point that people like him and I have to tell people this. I literally have folks telling me, almost daily, that I’m some grand conspirator using my “power” to effect the change I want to see at the Arsenal. If I was smart enough to conceive of plans like that to con and manipulate the masses, dude, I’d be a billionaire. Or at the very least, I’d be a faux billionaire president of the United States.
But that’s the world now. Everyone has an opinion, they are deeply divided on that opinion, and people who attempt to live in some kind of space between opinions are savaged by all sides.
You want my opinion? That is why you’re here!
Do I love Arsene Wenger? You bet. Would I have him back as manager of Arsenal? Nope. I don’t think he’s the way forward.
Do I respect Ozil’s talent? Oh hell yeah! But I’ve also criticized him hundreds of times – my season preview was basically “I hope Emery can get Ozil to play defense like his contemporaries”.
Do I support Emery? Sorry, but a lot less. Why would I just blindly support a manager who has almost no connection to my club? He’s not proved himself. Sorry (not sorry) that’s just how I am. I need proof. I don’t just automatically like everyone who is connected to Arsenal.
None of those opinions make me more or less an Arsenal supporter. They may make me an asshole and annoying but I’m still an Arsenal supporter.
Back to the Ozil thing, I strongly agree with Arseblog that the club have to fix this thing with Ozil and Emery. This has been stupid all season. But I think that this is just a symptom of larger problems at Arsenal. I think this is a club in turmoil.
Arsenal just offered a player a giant contract and a year later don’t play him. There is a lot of speculation, I’ve seen even Tim Stillman get in on this, that maybe Arsenal aren’t playing him because they either want to save salary somehow or force him to take a pay cut and leave the club. Even if we dismiss that speculation, there’s no question that Arsenal are paying Ozil a huge wage and not playing him, which is it’s own problem.
We offered another player a large contract and then rescinded it. We told a venerated and trusted reporter that we were going to appoint one manager and then appointed another. We lost a long-term CEO to another club. We hired a brilliant scout, used him to identify and attract some really talented players, and then pushed him out for some reason. We publish financial results that show we have £200m+ in cash and circulate memos telling people to cut costs on minor stuff and tell the press there’s no money for Emery to buy players.
And like Blogs, I think Ozil knows that fan sentiment is swinging against the manager. I asked my followers on twitter the same question I asked you yesterday: is Emery meeting your expectations? 93 responses and only one or two said yes. Most said no, the manager doesn’t have a clear playing style, he’s benching the most expensive player, there’s a lack of organization, the defense is still a mess, he’s fighting with players, etc. etc. So, I agree with Blogs that this was a cynical move by Ozil and that it’s not helping. It adds to the turmoil.
The departure of Arsene Wenger left a vacuum and in that vacuum the club is whirling around trying to figure out what it wants to be. A lot of people blame Wenger for that but that’s frankly ridiculous. They had years to fix a lot of these problems. They brought Sanllehi and Mislintat in last season. They all agreed to give Ozil the deal. They all agreed to hire Emery. They all knew what the financial situation was at the club for years and years. Arsene Wenger was powerful for sure, he did too much, also yes, but he wasn’t hiding away like Gollum, handing out special contracts all on his own.
Emery is just the coach. Ozil is just the player. We are just the fans. The club’s hierarchy are the new Wenger. It’s their job to solve these problems, to stop this turmoil.
I guess you could say that this is their way of solving the problems, which is it’s own problem, let’s be honest.
This is a big and significant issue.
What sort of Arsenal do we gooners want? I dont want a club that f*** over its players over legitimately struck agreements. Ozil is under no obligation to gently move aside and let Sanllehi and Emery bully him out of his contract. Ok, the retort will be that they’re under no obligation to pick and play him if he does not fit in with their systems, and that’s fair.
But if you want a player out, you pay up on the rest of his contract. And don’t tell me it’s too expensive… you left 100m+ of transfer fees on the table, by letting Alexis and Ramsey enter the last year of their contracts; in Alexis’ case, turning down 60m from City.
It’s one thing to not start him for footballing reasons, but if Mesut Ozil is not making your 18 man matchday squad, its’ not for footballing reasons. It’s constructive dismissal, by trying to create an untenable working environment. This is not the Arsenal I want.
We the fans come to regard people in the public eye as expendable. Chess pieces in a game. But Mesut Ozil is human, and his treatment by Arsenal must hurt. I really don’t care about his tweet. It can hardly shatter a peace and harmony that isn’t there in the first place.
And something to watch… some players have responded positively to it. Even the great Dennis Bergkamp did.
I love this comment
Wow. This is an interesting take. Thanks.
Thanks, Tim.
Agree. Ozil hasn’t exactly lit it up, but then he hasn’t been played consistently. It would be one thing if we were City with a massive surplus of high-quality players. But we don’t have that, and there’s no way we wouldn’t be better off performance wise by at least having him as an option to bring in in games like Bate.
And after how shabbily he was treated by the German establishment during the WC, this must hurt doubly much. So I can 100% understand his frustration.
While Arseblogs post this morning was well-reasoned and heartfelt, I’m not sure I agree.
Huh.. another good take.
I’m finally free enough to watch “Sunderland ’til I Die” and this reminds me a bit of Jack Rodwell. Sure, everyone talks about his personal pride and whatnot, but he didn’t give himself a contract without a relegation clause, and as he himself said, he’d worked for it from the age of 7 so the notion of simply letting go for no reason other than “personal pride” seemed absurd to him. It’s easy to make the emotional appeal when you’re not the one being asked to leave something on the table and walk away.
That CEO of Sunderland absolutely reminded me of Gazidis. Both so affected and so dumb.
Yup. Always hard to gauge behavior in these “reality” style shows. I think the original concept of Big Brother, for instance, was studying the behavior of people who know they’re being watched (they tend to modify their behavior to what they think the audience wants). Sounds like Martin Bain all over.
I suspect the whole point of that ‘documentary’ and how it was edited was to make everyone, except the chefs, look bad. The Gazidis guy, the players who won’t be there or those that refuse to go, the striker that didn’t want to be loaned back to Sunderland, and even Chris Coleman though I suspect the fans liked him enough for them to treat him with a bit more respect.
New management taking over as saviours. I wouldn’t be too sure there will be a second season . Maybe if they win promotion.
Shard: Wikipedia tells me they’re filming this season [of football] for Season 2.
“What sort of Arsenal do we gooners want? I dont want a club that f*** over its players over legitimately struck agreements.“
100% I’m in the US. I picked Arsenal (many years ago) because I loved to watch them play, even if we didn’t always win, because they had strong women’s teams, and because they had the reputation as a classy club.
Couldn’t agree more
A very well written comment. Enjoyed reading it as much as the post.
I believe the hierarchy and Emery are together on the Ozil situation. The highest paid player (by a distance), can’t be left out of the match day squad, during a bad run, without the hierarchy interfering, unless they are on the same page as the head coach.
I was discussing the current situation of the club with my brother the other day. We’re both lifelong Arsenal fans. I mean my Granddad was an Arsenal fan and he passed on a few years back at the age of 84.
My brother and I agreed on one thing from the outset, we’ve never been THIS apathetic towards the club ever. And this is a sentiment shared by fellow supporters that we know.
Its a situation born out of where the club is and where we see it heading.
We have a playmaker who is one of the best in the world + 2 of the top 20 strikers in the world.
The club needed to find a way to play Ozil.
If he can’t play defense, find a way to mitigate that. Don’t buy and play below standard players.
This is down to the club (for our current squad) and Emery (his match day setup) in a big way.
I’m not saying this cos I’m pro-Ozil. Like Blogs and Tim, and I’m sure alot of you, I’m pro-Arsenal.
Think of it this way. Ozil wants to stay and wants to play for this club. If he thought it was an issue of playtime, he could have just left in Jan. We know Ozil is the sensitive type (points to the German team fiasco) If he thought his position was untenable or the atmosphere toxic, then he could have went elsewhere. Even taken a paycut.
But he didn’t. And to me that proves he has a bond here which transcends the normal relationship a player has with a club.
We’re all Arsenal fans, hopefully all Arsenal fans first and foremost. But I wonder how many of us, as you’ve alluded to, still actually LIKE Arsenal (present/recent incarnation(s) anyway). Most 2nd halves of recent seasons, I’ve found myself watching from a Stockholm-syndrome, “institutionalized” instinct (basically, I’ve done this since 1999 and I don’t know any other way to function) more than actual support. Not that I’ve been slagging off the players viciously or such; more that it’s easier for me now to shrug off defeats and carry on with my life, turn off the game and do something else, sleep through a game because I expect a hammering and simply check the score later.
Same here on the “institutionalized” mode of watching Arsenal games. Think this season we’re really seeing the cost of keeping one guy at the helm for so long. It doesn’t even matter if that coach wins you a Champions League. Stagnation is always toxic in the end.
Maybe in 20 years Gooners will look back on this period of paying off the stadium and self-sustenance as a necessary evil to secure the future of Arsenal. Considering we were on the cusp of real, European-level greatness between 2001-2009, it’s hard to feel that way right now.
I didn’t like Arseblog’s take. Odd thing to blame Ozil for causing division as if this post came out of the blue. Is Ozil supposed to let the club control the narrative even as they try to wreck his career in order to weasel out of a contract?
An even odder take in that was reference to Ozil’s huge social media following. I know he didn’t say everyone, but the comment about people who support Ozil over Arsenal gives the impression that to support Ozil on this issue is picking player over club. Which is nonsense. It deliberately ignores the underlying, larger issue of the club’s values, which claude pointed out in his excellent comment.
On the tweet itself. At least Xhaka and Iwobi liked the tweet (or instagram or whatever it was. I only saw the images) They’ll have plausible deniability but I’m sure they know what they’re doing. These guys are friends and teammates, as well as footballers used to and wanting to play the beautiful game.
Go back and look at the Leicester game which Ozil ran. The celebration of that 3rd goal. There’s this extra special joy there beyond the significance of the goal, because the players all know they’ve pulled off a brilliant move. Emery won’t win over the players if he keeps being rigid about this. They need to enjoy their football again.
Interesting point about controlling the narrative. Everyone at Liverpool was up in arms about Sterling giving an interview when there were contract wranglings, but it seems to have been forgotten that a lot of vitriolic stories (the first offshoots of the ones you’re more familiar with now) were peddled about him in the press, almost certainly passed around by Liverpool to color his refusal to sign in a certain light with the fans. I think the interview was his attempt to seize back control but it only made things worse vis-a-vis the fans’ perception of him; perhaps he didn’t do it early enough.
Those Boston fucks are awful about character assassination against players who don’t just accept their contract terms. They will try to destroy people. I wonder how much of that laid the foundations for the Daily Mail being such awful pricks to Sterling?
I’m sure that’s where it started. All depends on when the [false] rumor was first floated that Sterling had many children by many mothers, the first being born when he was only 17. If it was at about that time, then it certainly opened the floodgates.
You know who had excellent PR as an Arsenal player? Cesc. That dude’s media statements and leaks were all perfect in managing his reputation, even as, and amazingly, after he engineered his move away from Arsenal, and then to Chelsea. Whoever handles his PR is a genius.
Ozil’s PR is amazing in that they don’t just go for platitudes. It’s courageous. People can call it playing to a gallery or cynical, but they are consistent in the sort of messaging they put out, and they are willing to face not just bouquets but brickbats for it as well. It wouldn’t pay off for them if Ozil weren’t authentic though. That’s how I was almost certain at the time that Ozil intended to stay instead of run down his contract.
People still love that guy. Unfathomable.
Arseblog (and James from Gunnerblog yesterday), completely missed the bigger picture for me. Sometimes I think we need to spend less time as pundits and strategists, and more time as fans and “real people”, as we liked to say at the BBC. There’s almost a little too much knowledge about football politics.
Take a step back and ask ourselves if the club’s approach to Ozil is right. It is not. The wage bill, the transfer budget, the tactics, the strategy, the size of his pay packet are all important variables and considerations — don’t get me wrong — but the way they’ve played this out ihas been disappointing. Other gooners are going to disagree with me, and that’s fine. I see Ozil FIRST, first, as a human being. And in the big scheme of things, I’m not the least bit bothered whether his tweet (restrained put pointed), upsets Raul and Unai. The notion that is disruptive is laughable. Disrupt what?
Cynical? Perhaps, although that’s not a description I’d give it. Cynical suggests cold. He’s a man under tremendous stress, especially given the year he’s just had. Both his transfer value and his earning prospects are now severely diminished. And on top of that, his club is trying to shove him towards the exits, while hoping not to have to pay his full outlay.
And at this point, neither am I bothered about what he earns. It was a poorly-judged agreement, of course, but it takes 2 to tango. They are going to have to take a hit on it if they want him out in the summer. In the meantime, they should seek to make good use of their asset. The players know, as you said, Shard. He’s valued. I noticed what you did too with the Leicester goal.
Aresblog’s Andrew (like James the night before) also conflated Ozil’s die-hards with thoughtful and legit criticism of his treatment. Any regular here knows that I’m no Ozil die-hard, but on this issue, I feel that his treatment, as an Arsenal employee, has been shocking.
p.s. I appreciate the shout out. Worry degree of accord between us lately 🙂
Yeah it’s disconcerting, isn’t it? 🙂
Also, another great comment!
Again, I appreciate this comment. Really making me think about this issue in a different way.
A ruthless , dirty corporate billionaire and his hand picked apparatus in charge of a financial portfolio asset mascarading for a football club , against an aimage obsessed, pampered mega star surrounded by a team of media savvy image manipulators.
Who to side with …hm….. , it’s a tough one.
Team Ozil ekes it out if only by a whisker.
If I’m honest, the Ozil vs Managment stand off is becoming more interesting to watch than the product Arsenal put out on the field.
Popcorn time.
I never expected this Mesut issue will become a matter of discourse….and it’s getting messy.
I don’t think the club hierarchy and the coach has handled this particularly well….except there have been transfer discussions where the two sides have irreconcilable positions.
Fine, he might not have matched Emery’s expectation for pitch ethics…but
He earns 350k weekly..
A very talented player…
Cool headed all the while ( from all I see)…
Arsenal is stuck with Ozil because of the wage…why not maximise it then. What’s the essence of game/player management that doesn’t fit your most creative head into the tactics?
He hasn’t claimed to be a Neymar or Messi…no tantrums here and there….yet he was frozen out of seemingly “smaller matches”.
I initially didn’t read any deep meaning to the tweet until the analyses from different quarters…
The PR team are trying to play smart too…or else, Ozil keeps loosing a battle which nobody knew when the war was declared.
Emery has probably created a Neymaric issue now….better management in terms of play time and tactical adjustment would have helped.
This issue is painting Arsenal in a bad light, cos the player will soon leave (even the career will also be over), but the instution remains with the history to cope with.
Chai….the media has done something again.
I thought the media handling of Wenger was was bad enough, and his exit will bring some fresh air to the club. However, 6 months down the line, the toxicity is building up again.
Arsenal FC…!!!
Heh…re: media handling, we will ALWAYS be ripe for comedy. Arsenal fans rule the [football] internet, so they know there’re endless clicks to harvest.
It really shows how dysfunctional the club is on so many levels. Even if Ozil doesn’t fit Emery’s style of play, he could have been useful in some home games against average clubs. If the Arsenal board really wants to force a transfer this summer, they should first find a replacement for Ozil (Suarez is nowhere near his level) and then leave Ozil out of the squad submitted to the Premier League. That’s their only option to win the PR battle.
Nice analysis Tim. I really love Özil’s tweet. Or maybe his clever adviser Dr Erkut’s tweet in reality.
His social media posts have been on-message and positive without exception, and it can’t be said enough; from Özil’s letter to the DFB, to the way he’s handled being sidelined with an apparent level head – he is being expertly advised by a very intelligent person who has a feel for the club. That’s also a reflection on Özil’s intelligence.
Earlier in his career he had to sack members of his own family from positions of authority over his career (even his Dad I think), so whether he authors individual tweets or not, he’s definitely in control of the overall message.
Özil could’ve turned this club into a toxic wastedump already. Instead he bigs up the team on social media, and commiserates and encourages when we lose. And he does it whether he plays or not. Who knows what’s said behind closed doors? But instead of publicly inflaming tensions, he soothes them.
Gunnerblog’s tweet about it being “trolling” was the kind of ‘extremely online’ analysis we dom’t need. It’s a toxic response to a non-toxic message.
The season Conte’s Chelsea won the title, Özil had those iconic performances in the home wins over Chelsea and United. I don’t remember him being consistently good in the games after those. He’s done the same thing this year but under a different coach. I love Mesut and hate these bad performances, but I can’t blame Emery alone for failing to solve a problem Wenger couldn’t.
The essence of being a great coach is making the best out of your players even if they are not meant to fit into your way of play. Like transforming a striker like Toure into a world class defender. You have to develop their best qualities and work on their drawbacks and tweak your tactics to work with the capacity you got. Has Emry done that regarding Ozil? NO…
I feel like he has got some inferiority issues regarding world class player’s given his handling of such players in the past. So he wanted to dominate the team and can’t handle Ozil. .. Sanlehi wanted to show the anti football owners some stunt. That’s what caused all this. The question is “what would you post if were in this situation like Ozil is?” May be….. we might do or post something much worse. As far as I know both Emry and Sanlehi came to arsenal after Ozil… and anybody who doubts his attachment to the club over them should go to the nearest psychic.
I expected a bit of mess post-Wenger, even a sh*t show before we sorted ourselves out. Unfortunately the club has delivered on these expectations is spades.
Whatever our failings after the last league win, we remained an important club that neutrals and opposing fans gave due consideration.
I feel that’s slipping way and that’s what hurts.
How do you support an institution/club that you have followed for almost all your life when their actions/values become offensive? That’s the daily struggle now. No Arsenal player has ever played a blinder in every game. Hector, Kos, Olivier, Cech have all been subject to condemnation at some point. Yet the fact that Arsenal Football Club agreed to pay him £350k knowing full well his strengths and weaknesses is suddenly the stick to beat him senseless with. I’m glad he is taking a stand. He is entitled to. Arseblog and others may mean well but theirs is not a position that reflects what AFC used to stand for
Pretty disappointed with the big name Arsenal bloggers on this issue especially gunnerblog. Posting a slightly inflammatory tweet accusing Ozil, and then using the blowback to make himself seem reasonable is not a good look. Not justifying the blowback but the smarm on display is terrible. Given that he has no qualms calling Ozil’s sincerity into question, I should have no hesitation in wondering why he and his ilk are carrying water for the management. Do they fear they’ll be cut off from whatever access and perks they have now? I know that’s an unfair aspersion on these guys but that’s the kind of rhetoric being used against Ozil.
Case in point,I saw a response to you on Twitter calling this a dispute between corporations. Really? Makes me want to mute Arsenal Twitter for the rest of the season and watch the dire football on display.
Another stock reply I’ve seen is that this is just business. As though being a business justifies this kind of behavior. Sports fandom is already a series of moral compromises ( team I cheer for is owned by a Trump supporting billionaire who shafted Saint Louis out of a team) but I refuse to take the side of management if it can’t stay true to a contract and tries to run a player out of town.
Hey guys, the doc gooner here. First, I wanted to say I watched “On the Basis of Sex” with my wife and thought it was a great movie, you should all see it. I thought it was really well written and brilliantly acted. My only issue was I kept mentally referring to Felicity Jones as “Ray” the entire time because of her role in Rogue 1 and because her name in this movie begins with the same letter.
Second, you guys should watch this time-lapse video of pandas falling over but not getting hurt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLQiAqc1MI8). It will simultaneously make you say “awwww” and also laugh out loud a bit, which I think is good for the human spirit. Then, you should read Lucy Cooke’s “The Truth About Animals” and get hyped up on outrage when you find out that the Chinese government is artificially inseminating hundreds of Pandas in a giant industrial complex without ever rehabilitating those offspring into the wild and then using them as pawns to curry diplomatic favor or trade agreements with various nations around the world. Also, Pandas have the funniest estrus cycle and mating habits in the entire animal kingdom, besides maybe sloths or eels. Anyways, it’s a terrific read.
Third, you might be able to tell I’m becoming emotionally detached from Arsenal which tends to happen pretty reliably every calendar year around February. See, it’s not that we have better problems, it’s just that we have less familiar problems and that’s more scary. We used to be bored of having the same old problems. You know, we can’t really win big games, our stars get injured and then poached by other teams, we crash out of every meaningful competition before April, getting shellacked by Bayern Munich in the Champions’ League, that sort of thing. But there is a comforting familiarity to all of that and every once in a while, Arsenal did something really cool like beat Tottenham or even win an FA cup final. There was always this small but growing, increasingly insistent part of the fan base that wasn’t content with that. They wanted Arsenal to “grow up” and become a “real club” (Pinocchio voice: I’m a real club!). They wanted us to learn to defend “properly” (whatever that means) and they wanted us to sign players who would make that easier to do, players who were big and mean and possibly a little bit violent against **certain clubs** only of course. It seemed like those people were so much in the majority when poor old Arsene was finally sacked. “Anything but this” was the mantra.
Well those people got what they wanted. Now it’s all different. Now we have a defense first coach who prizes effort above all and we have lots of hard working players who run around quite a bit. But The People are less happy than they were before, maybe even less happy than they were in the “anything but this” stage of Arsene Wenger, when even his players seemed to give up on him in certain matches. Now that this still screaming, still blue in the face newborn version of Arsenal is still gasping for breath, we are remembering Arsene and his teams in an ever rosier glow. Where has Arsenal gone? Do you remember how we used to get obliterated in the round of 16 every season? At least we were in the CL. Do you remember how we used to finish 20-30 points behind the leaders in the league? At least we made top 4. Do you remember how our defense was a sieve and we conceded 40-50 goals per season? At least we played nice football. So what’s more important to you, gooners? Do you want your club to change, to get with the times and to learn to defend, or do you want your Arsenal back? You can’t have both. Ozil is the past. I love Ozil. I love the past. But now we have a new headmaster, for better or worse, and he’s just getting started. We won’t know if he’s any good if we fire him when the going gets tough.
Hey guys, the doc gooner here. First, I wanted to say I watched “On the Basis of S.e.x.” with my wife and thought it was a great movie, you should all see it. I thought it was really well written and brilliantly acted. My only issue was I kept mentally referring to Felicity Jones as “Ray” the entire time because of her role in Rogue 1 and because her name in this movie begins with the same letter.
Second, you guys should watch this time-lapse video of pandas falling over but not getting hurt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLQiAqc1MI8). It will simultaneously make you say “awwww” and also laugh out loud a bit, which I think is good for the human spirit. Then, you should read Lucy Cooke’s “The Truth About Animals” and get hyped up on outrage when you find out that the Chinese government is artificially inseminating hundreds of Pandas in a giant industrial complex without ever rehabilitating those offspring into the wild and then using them as pawns to curry diplomatic favor or trade agreements with various nations around the world. Also, Pandas have the funniest estrus cycle and mating habits in the entire animal kingdom, besides maybe sloths or eels. Anyways, it’s a terrific read.
Third, you might be able to tell I’m becoming emotionally detached from Arsenal which tends to happen pretty reliably every calendar year around February. See, it’s not that we have fewer problems, it’s just that we have less familiar problems and that’s more scary. We used to be bored of having the same old problems. You know, we can’t really win big games, our stars get injured and then poached by other teams, we crash out of every meaningful competition before April, getting shellacked by Bayern Munich in the Champions’ League, that sort of thing. But there is a comforting familiarity to all of that and every once in a while, Arsenal did something really cool like beat Tottenham or even win an FA cup final. There was always this small but growing, increasingly insistent part of the fan base that wasn’t content with that. They wanted Arsenal to “grow up” and become a “real club” (Pinocchio voice: I’m a real club!). They wanted us to learn to defend “properly” (whatever that means) and they wanted us to sign players who would make that easier to do, players who were big and mean and possibly a little bit violent against **certain clubs** only of course. It seemed like those people were so much in the majority when poor old Arsene was finally sacked. “Anything but this” was the mantra.
Well those people got what they wanted. Now it’s all different. Now we have a coach who prizes effort above all and we have lots of hard working players who run around quite a bit. But The People are less happy than they were before, maybe even less happy than they were in the “anything but this” stage of Arsene Wenger, when even his players seemed to give up on him in certain matches. Now that this still screaming, still blue in the face newborn version of Arsenal is still gasping for breath, we are remembering Arsene and his teams in an ever rosier glow. Where has Arsenal gone? Do you remember how we used to get obliterated in the round of 16 every season? At least we were in the CL. Do you remember how we used to finish 20-30 points behind the leaders in the league? At least we made top 4. Do you remember how our defense was a sieve and we conceded 40-50 goals per season? At least we played nice football. So what’s more important to you, gooners? Do you want your club to change, to get with the times and to learn to defend, or do you want your Arsenal back? You can’t have both. Ozil is the past. I love Ozil. I love the past. But now we have a new headmaster, for better or worse, and he’s just getting started. We won’t know if he’s any good if we fire him when the going gets tough.
Credit to Arseblog for a more measured take today.
Nobody who’s criticising the club’s treatment of Ozil has said that he isn’t culpable to some degree. He has gone from sublime to rank awful (Wolves and Southampton, where he was directly complicit in losing the ball for the winning goal). But he doesn’t have a monopoly on playing badly. Aubameyang was terrible against City, a game in which he played 90 minutes
excluding Europe, cups…
Mesut had 3 goals and 1 assist in the league in his limited minutes
Mhki has 4 and 1 playing slightly fewer minutes
Ramsey 1 and 6 in roughly the same playing time as Mhki
Iwobi 3 and 4 playing about 30% more than Ozil
Xhaka 3 and 1 (identical to Ozil) playing virtually every game, and far more minutes
Bellerin 0 and 5 playing 50% more
Kolasinac 0 and 4
Nacho 1 and 3 playing identical minutes to Ozil
Torreira 2 and 2
Guendouzi 0 and 0
Koscielny 2 and 0 (same as Mustafi) in hardly any playing time
Our strikers? Really good numbers
PEA 15 and 4
Laca 10 and 5
I had a look at pass accuracy as well. The back-field players tend to have better %ages, because the passes are comparatively low risk. Ozil, for an attacking player who’s not a sideways merchant, is the safest passer among forward players. He passes the ball better than Xhaka, Bellerin, Mustafi, Ramsey, Lichtsteiner, Mkhi, Iwobi and defenitely Kolasinac. (Our best passers ahead of Ozil, btw, in descending order are Koscielny, Sokratis, Monreal, Elneny (🙂), Torreira, Guendouzi and Holding). Mustafi and Kolasinac have low percentages for backfield players. And Monreal is a more efficient player than the more eye-catching Kolasinac, but that’s another debate for another time.
So despite Emery hardly playing him and playing him in a less adventurous system, Ramsey is our assist leader (Bellerin surely would have ended the season with these honours).
Despite Emery throttling Ozil’s minutes and his assist numbers being waaaaay down, he’s still got 3 superbly taken goals to his name, and is efficient with the ball in attacking areas. What the stats also don’t show is pre-assists, like an out of this world ball to Kolasinac on the overlap, who assisted Aubameyang… against Burnley, playing deep and compact.
So yes, you can say that Mesut’s productivity is down… but so is Ramsey’s due to a combination of fewer minutes and a different system. But the stats do make a mockery of Emery’s decision to freeze Ozil out of his matchday SQUADS altogether. Whatever the reason is, it’s certainly not football related.
Key passes would provide a better picture, Im sure.
To add, good percentage passing in the attacking third is absolute gold. With Ozil you lose pressing and D from the front, but he is more likely than not going to unlock tired defences, and find his man more efficiently than Iwobi, Mhki, Ramsey, the strikers or the overlapping full backs. So Emery is cutting off his own nose.
Fun fact… Denis Suarez, in 38 minutes of playing for us, is our most accurate passer at 94%. I didnt include him, because 38 is no sample size at all. But small mercies…
How I want Arsenal to at least experience some media peace that could afford the new coach and management team an opportunity for growth, but that seems not the case. AFC please don’t shoot yourself in the foot by rousing another round of toxicity.
I want to believe there’s much more to Ozil’s exclusion from the squad than the issue of tactics or work ethic. He had contributed 4 goals and 2 assist this season….the 2 came against Leicester…and could have been more if he had more opportunities.
If he somehow played these matches and made impact, I think the coach needs to work out the tactical situations that could help maximise his talent.
It does not add up either in the footballing (we’ve not been better by excluding him) nor economic term (Arsenal still pay the 350k). Why not just encourage the guy so he can play his best, then put him on the window at the end of the season.
Buy out his contract if you’re so intent on moving him.
This issue needs to be corrected and Ozil restored to the squad because those that are chosen on some kind of merit are not doing better either.
The football has been dull and uninteresting, with no definite pattern of play.
Emery needs to live up to the billing as a master of tactics….i think he should maximise Ozil’s imagination.
***I smell there is something of a divergent view between the pair.
I hope the management team and coach are smart enough to resolve this issue and let Arsenal grow.
All I have been waiting for, is balanced reporting of the situation between the club, Emery and Ozil. We really don’t have any information about the relationship and why the situation is as it is, so to allocate blame to Ozil the way so many bloggers have has been disappointing.
I expected there to be a worst case scenario implicating all parties and also reasons why they may not be the problem either. But what I have constantly heard or read is how Ozil is certain to be blamed, even if he hasn’t done anything, he should still take some blame for not meeting our expectations as fans. When it came to analysis of the club and Emery, they have been measured in their criticism and understanding of the circumstances they find themselves in, to the point where they can miss what is plain to see in that a club like Arsenal is hounding an employee out of the door because it doesn’t want to honour the employee’s contract.
I have heard how they can’t believe that Emery could be egotistic, but they can believe Ozil to be that. They can’t believe Emery to be vengeful, but they have no problem believing Ozil can be so. The narrative is that Ozil must have done something, and I have not heard a single person touch on how Emery or the club could be mistreating Ozil, or maybe they think as long as he earns his massive wages that he is par for the course. Nobody has looked at the coaches history to ascertain his relationships with players at former clubs, nobody has looked at Sanlehi to find out the same, and we never hear about Ozil’s behaviour except that he was treated favourably by Wenger, which gets exaggerated for maximum effect. I mean practically, what actions could Wenger have really done for Ozil to say he was treated specially?
So every Tim I hear about Ozil and Emery, I usually know what I am going to get. Ozil will be painted worst, Emery will be understood and the club will be criticized for not doing enough to get rid of Ozil in order to get more players in, it’s as predictable as knowing we will play with no defensive structure, concede clear cut chances, have no ideas when dominating possession and if we win, we most likely will have not deserved it.
And every post about Ozil will also call anyone who defends him, a fanboy, diehard or whatever it is that can be used to describe Ozil as almost a religion and his followers as fanatics. I love Ozil, but a person can be level headed as well. To point to social media to prove that there are legions of fanatics online is really missing the point and basically pointing to the land of the fanatics. We are here in the comments, and showing that you can be level headed and still admire a player.
Sometimes it gets too much and I think this is the tipping point where many bloggers should look back on their words this season about this whole situation and ask themselves whether they have been reporting fairly or pushing the club’s narrative. Even if Ozil does not play well, as an employee who has carried himself well in this conflict, he doesn’t deserve what is being written about him and the Sterling situation perfectly fits what Blogs and gunnerblog are doing to Mesut.
I hope they can take a step back to see it more clearly instead of using the craziness on social media to justify their rhetoric.
Part of the reason there’s so much unrest around the club, so much frantic commentary (aside from the fact it sells ads), is that Arsenal – as an institution – has a stand-offish personality. It’s almost passive aggressive.
There was the AGM where the leadership acted like answering questions from fans was beneath them. When the club was in meltdown mode the Board released that absurd statement that was devoid of any sense of urgency or ambition. One of the worst seasons in recent memory and leadership was basically invisible throughout. I maintain that keeping Wenger around long after it was decided he’d be leaving was a massive massive mistake. Nothing was stopping us from inviting him to the last him game as a special guest. Instead we had the Wenger hangover while Wenger was still coach, and there’s no patience in reserve for the new man.
No wonder Gooners fill up that information vacuum with (conspiracy) theories of their own, fall into competing camps and engage in discursive duels. I don’t think Özil is being ‘constructively dismissed’ any more than Elneny is. And Sanllehi isn’t the Dark Overlord of Austerity some like making him out to be, but it’s hard to blame people for coming to their own conclusions sometimes.
When the team’s playing well and competing for CL or the title, the club can afford to be silent. During turbulent periods the club needs to be much more proactive. Can this motherf*cking club just grow some personality?
The elephant in the room, as always, is the Kroenke’s. I guess this is just who we are now.
Some good thoughts here. I understand the message, but let me respond as someone who wanted a change of coach as early as 2010.
Just as you say things under Wenger maybe weren’t that bad, things this season aren’t that bad either. Wenger is not the only coach in existence who deserves a shot at our club. The fact that he isn’t coaching at any other big clubs should speak volumes. The modern game moved on from him years ago.
Being a big club means having the courage to lose excellent players or managers in the name of ambition or growth. This is something we don’t have the hang of. Every decent player that leaves us is a calamity. Wenger leaving was a nuclear holocaust. Tim Stillman wrote a really great piece about how we overeact to situations that should be normal for a club our size.
Now that change is here, I welcome it. Emery deserves far more patience than people are willing to give him, but if the club decides to make another big decision and start again, I will support that too. We won’t always get the right hire first time around. The point is we shouldn’t have been afraid to risk failure by trying to upgrade from Wenger, and we shouldn’t be afraid to upgrade Emery if we think that’s the best course of action now. But I agree with you that for better or for worse he’s just getting started.
I also agree with you when you say “Özil is the past”. But so is Wenger, and revisionism about the good times under him is futile.