Mesut Özil

peterstorey said:
Stupidly I'd say since Ozil is a vital part of us being well ahead of you in the league and on track for a an FA cup final.
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Ha yes of course....Nothing to do with the fact we've had an under performing manager, a novice coaching staff and players not bothering their arse...Maybe Ozil is the reason Olympikus are ahead in our tie....Maybe he's the reason why Spurs and Liverpool and Chelsea and City are also ahead of us in the league.

Now we've got to the bottom of it! It's not Moyes' fault, it's Ozil's!!!!!
 
JSArsenal said:
Never said I was completely happy with his performances. I just understand that he is adjusting to a new league, new system and style of play and instead of Ronaldo in front of him he has Olivier Giroud. He needs time to adjust but he still hasn't been as poor as some people are making out.

One difference between Ozil and Berbatov, was that Berbatov was never bought to be the main man at Man Utd, and even if he was he always had Rooney, Tevez and Ronaldo ahead of him. I think he spent one season as first choice striker, 10/11. Whereas Ozil is our main man so he's coming in for a lot more flak than Berbatov ever did. Besides the odd assist what more does everyone want? He isn't a great goal scorer but he's 4 behind his all time total of 10 goals in a season so far having played around 20 less matches, in a new league.
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If you aren't happy with his performances then you can at the very least understand why he is being criticised. Agreed that he's currently adjusting to plenty of new things, but as somebody pointed out earlier the media waits for nobody - see De Gea as a perfect example of somebody who took a little time to adapt. He came in for his fair share of criticism during his transition too. Ozil was being hailed as the leagues best after 5 good games, now he's a flop after a few bad games - he's proven neither yet, but surely you have to just accept that he deserves some criticism after some disappointing performance.

I'm really struggling to understand your 'besides the odd assist what more does everybody want?' comment when not more than a sentence earlier you just pointed out that Ozil is your main man. Your main man needs to control games, drive the team forward with the ball, and take more responsibility for the teams overall performance (think David Silva). We all know he's capable of controlling games, he's done it a few times, he just needs to do it more often and in no time he will be hailed as one of the leagues best again. If he isn't able to make that step up then at £42m he's been a pretty underwhelming purchase.
 
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Funny to see the gooners complaining about an English witchunt against Ozil. It doesn't explain why the German fans booed him in their recent international match, though.
Forget the price tag, his performances hasn't been good enough. He came here with a big reputation and aside from doing the business against some poor sides, he has largely been poor. Most of the big teams have sussed him out and thus completely nullified him.
 
KM said:
Funny to see the gooners complaining about an English witchunt against Ozil. It doesn't explain why the German fans booed him in their recent international match, though.
Forget the price tag, his performances hasn't been good enough. He came here with a big reputation and aside from doing the business against some poor sides, he has largely been poor. Most of the big teams have sussed him out and thus completely nullified him.
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Balu said:
The German nationalteam was booed at home quite a few times in recent years. Schweinsteiger experienced something similar a year ago. The whole team doesn't give a feck in friendlies and the ticket prices aren't cheap, so I do understand the fans if they're not happy, when they have to watch the players walking around the pitch, doing at best what's necessary, often not even that. Singleing one player out sucks though. Özil had 2 or 3 great moments, including the assist for Götze's goal, but other than that his performance was incredibly shit, he just watched the midfield and left wing getting overrun time and time again. He wasn't any worse than quite a few others though. Pretty sure, if Kroos was subbed off, he would have been booed as well. It had nothing to do with Özil's season so far.
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This does.
 
Point taken, but he still does say that his performances was incredibly shit which sounds just about right.
 
Neil Ashton delivers another corker of an article. "Nicking a living" and "face liked a slapped backside." His quality of writing is ghastly.

Ozil can't really win at the moment, and as has been opined, it's quite likely that Ashton's piece was mostly written prior to kick off. Had he managed anything worthwhile, the article will have been shelved and he may have received a little credit in the actual match report. It is a witch hunt, but nowhere near as bad as De Gea's. De Gea's was disgusting, vicious and written to fit a narrative: "Fergie fecked up again." Peter Schmeichel was being asked to go onto MOTD, specifically to talk over a montage of De Gea mistakes that, and we all know, weren't even mistakes. Ozil's got a way to go yet.
 
Ashton is a twat. Chelsea loving shit, some of his articles on AVB were a disgrace.
 
He's just become a target. It's just lazy journalism. Even tonight, he was always going to struggle to influence the game when they hardly had the ball. He was hardly the biggest problem for Arsenal (Arteta, Giroud for example). It's his first season in the country, and I think he's done quite well. His form has tailed off, but he's played a lot as well as picking up a few knocks. It's not really surprising he's now suffered a muscle injury. He'll come good and a lot of people will be looking stupid. "Nicking a living", absolutely amazing how Ashton still has a job.
 
There will be a lot of egg on people's faces here when Ozil goes beast mode next season, once he has a proper striker ahead of him.
 
@alastair - I don't think that the media have some personal vendetta against him.

However, they built him up to be Arsenal's saviour. The world class piece they were missing with the potential to bring them back to glory days.

They set themselves up to knock him down if an easy opportunity arose. The mainstream who watch nothing but MOTD would come into the Spoons I work at and tell me how brilliant a signing he is without barely/ever seeing him play, how he's automatically the league's best player and has the ability to carry Arsenal.

He's not really a player to carry but one to support. A quality striker up front next season and I think things will be different. He's not really a player you should be looking to to take responsibility. In a team surrounded by other world class players, he'd take far less of the blame. Silva has had some very ineffective games for City but receives far less criticism for it as he was never built up to be 'that guy' in the first place.


He's definitely contributed towards it though. However many miles he covers, people take far more notice of a players body language and he reeks of dejection sometimes.

In England, if you aren't going to put a crunching tackle in and be aggressive (I agree you shouldn't have to), at least pick your head up or show signs of willingness beyond running.

Hell.. Most English fans would probably associate hard work and commitment from waving your arms to the crowd in a bid to spark some noise.
 
:lol: What in the blue blazes is the matter with this thread? Anyone posting in it seems to have taken a complete leave of their senses.

Or are just on a very elaborate wind-up. Stop biting, al.
 
A few points to make here.

This alleged media witch-hunt is irrelevant. These days articles in the Daily Mail are just click-bait. The intention is to provoke, not inform. They give Andy Durham a column FFS. That said, I don't understand why having shit articles written about him should protect Ozil from valid criticism on here.

It's quite possible that he covered a lot of ground in the first leg and is still lazy. Arsenal chased the ball for almost the whole game and Ozil was one of only three midfielders who played 90 minutes and was expected to track back as well as try to get forward on the rare occasion Arsenal tried to attack. If he hadn't covered at least the third highest distance that would be pretty disgraceful. Of course, distance covered also doesn't tell us anything about the intensity of his runs and how much ground was covered at a jog vs a sprint. You didn't need stats to see that his fullback was getting almost no support and there's a good reason Flamini gave him a public bollocking. He blatantly didn't work hard enough, defensively, in a game where Arsenal badly needed all hands on deck.

Finally, of course United fans are going to be quick to get on his case. This bloke cost more than any Manchester United player ever signed. We allegedly turned down the opportunity to sign him and then we endured an almighty wankfest when he had a few good games against cannon fodder in the opening games of the season, while the world and his wife took the piss out of every aspect of United's summer business. Now it turns out Ozil's carried his big game bottler form with him from Spain and is repeatedly failing to turn up when Arsenal need him most. Stands to reason we're going to queue up to put the boot in. If anyone is bothered by this, I dunno, maybe stop spending so much time on a Manchester United message board?

So yeah, Ozil.

Huge eyes. Tiny cojones. Combines the outrageous skill with complete lack of desire that characterised Wenger's last big money signing, Andre Arshavin. Arsene sure knows how to spot 'em.
 
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Messi and Ronaldo are often the 'laziest' player on the pitch. Impact on team performance is more important than run a lot, obviously. But if the player appears lazy, and with below par impact, he should be dumped to Fulham.
 
Archie Leach said:
Is that a wum or are you really that certain?
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Wum. I actually think ozil is brilliant and like many players before him will only hit top form next season. One of my favorite footballers in the world.

But somehow people have decided that because he sucked against bayern he's ballsless. As if he's the first attacker to be choked out of a game by guardiola's possession game.

Time will tell but I think he'll be a star for Arsenal.
 
.Rossi said:
Ha yes of course....Nothing to do with the fact we've had an under performing manager, a novice coaching staff and players not bothering their arse...Maybe Ozil is the reason Olympikus are ahead in our tie....Maybe he's the reason why Spurs and Liverpool and Chelsea and City are also ahead of us in the league.

Now we've got to the bottom of it! It's not Moyes' fault, it's Ozil's!!!!!
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:lol:
 
Pogue Mahone said:
A few points to make here.

This alleged media witch-hunt is irrelevant. These days articles in the Daily Mail are just click-bait. The intention is to provoke, not inform. They give Andy Durham a column FFS. That said, I don't understand why having shit articles written about him should protect Ozil from valid criticism on here.

It's quite possible that he covered a lot of ground in the first leg and is still lazy. Arsenal chased the ball for almost the whole game and Ozil was one of only three midfielders who played 90 minutes and was expected to track back as well as try to get forward on the rare occasion Arsenal tried to attack. If he hadn't covered at least the third highest distance that would be pretty disgraceful. Of course, this doesn't tell us anything about the intensity of his runs and how much ground was covered at a jog vs a sprint. You didn't need stats to see that his fullback was getting almost no support and there's a good reason Flamini gave him a public bollocking. He blatantly didn't work hard enough, defensively, in a game where Arsenal badly needed all hands on deck.

Finally, of course United fans are going to be quick to get on his case. This bloke cost more than any Manchester United player ever signed. We allegedly turned down the opportunity to sign him and then we endured an almighty wankfest when he had a few good games against cannon fodder in the opening games of the season, while the world and his wife took the piss out of every aspect of United's summer business. Now it turns out Ozil's carried his big game bottler form with him from Spain and is repeatedly failing to turn up when Arsenal need him most. Stands to reason we're going to queue up to put the boot in. If anyone is bothered by this, I dunno, maybe stop spending so much time on a Manchester United message board?

So yeah, Ozil.

Huge eyes. Tiny cojones. Combines the outrageous skill with complete lack of desire that characterised Wenger's last big money signing, Andre Arshavin. Arsene sure knows how to spot 'em.
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Nail on head there.....

He could redeem himself against Wigan and help end the trophy drought

Arsenal have missed Ramsey much more and when all fit I wonder will Ozil start seeing some bench time
 
I never understood why they signed him in the first place, let alone fr that kind of money. Attacking midfield is one area Arsenal didn't need to upgrade and has a great depth in.

They could have spent less and brought in someone like Higuain instead.
 
antihenry said:
I never understood why they signed him in the first place, let alone fr that kind of money. Attacking midfield is one area Arsenal didn't need to upgrade and has a great depth in.

They could have spent less and brought in someone like Higuain instead.
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Why did we sign Mata when we desperately needed strengthening in other areas? If a top class player is available and you need a big lift it can be very tempting...

Anyway, for all his flaws Ozil is still one of the main reason they're challenging for the title and in a cup final. Hardly a bad buy and with way, way more still to come.

If Arsenal get a top striker and a more balanced team then we'll see Ozil flourish. I suspect he'll be a bit like DDG though in that he'll still get criticism even after he's clearly improved.
 
buckooo1978 said:
Nail on head there.....

He could redeem himself against Wigan and help end the trophy drought

Arsenal have missed Ramsey much more and when all fit I wonder will Ozil start seeing some bench time
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Why does he have to redeem himself? Ozil is one of the reasons they are in the semi finals of the FA Cup.

He played on the right (not his best position) against the best side in the world. It was fairly obvious yesterday that his conditioning wasn't right, so what exactly is he meant to do? The big game flop tag is a fair criticism, but I don't believe it's fair to criticise him for yesterday's performance when you consider the above.

According to a lot of the papers, Ozil is lazy and disinterested, yet the same papers see his injury as a "massive blow" to Arsenal's title bid. If Arsenal do win the FA Cup, the headlines will change from "Flop" to "Mesut Ozil leads Arsenal to FA Cup glory", or something remotely similar.

All great #10s needs movement around them. If you don't have movement, then it's very, very hard to create great chances to help your team. Arsenal and Ozil have missed Ramsey and Walcott. Also (small point) but... prior to the Bayern Munich game, he was very good against Everton in the FA Cup, but this thread wasn't bumped with a lot of posts praising his performance.

antihenry said:
I never understood why they signed him in the first place, let alone fr that kind of money. Attacking midfield is one area Arsenal didn't need to upgrade and has a great depth in.

They could have spent less and brought in someone like Higuain instead.
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When a top player like Ozil becomes available, you sign him. It's as easy as that IMO. Wenger has been criticised for years for his transfer strategy. Even when he does spend big, he receives a lot of criticism. Ozil, according to Mourinho, is the best #10 in the world. Suarez, the best player in the league this season, was criticised a lot in 11/12 for not being a "natural finisher". Look where he is today. There is no doubt that Ozil has been inconsistent since December, but this is a good season for him, and he'll improve.
 
Yeah, we can't have this thread move toward a reasoned discussion now, can we?

Tsk, MoneyMay.
 
He'll get better I think but he'll have to change his "lazy" demeanor. Against Everton he showed he can be that kinda player with urgency in his game. He needs to do this more often because the rest of his games goes from fine to fantastic.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Obviously, a lot of players improve in their second and subsequent seasons in the PL. It would be a mistake to assume that they all do, though.
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You'd imagine Ozil would be more likely than most to improve though.

A) He's still a few years from his peak so you'd expect him to continue developing anyway.
B) We know from his time at Madrid that he is capable of a much higher standard than this.
C) He's a player who lacks physical robustness and he's just moved to a league with much greater physical demands, where he is expected to play much more frequently. This is a problem but one you'd expect a top player to improve on with time.

I think Arsenal fans should be more worried about their forward options, their defence, their lack of balance, their lack of depth and their lack of leadership. Ozil can't fix those problems, no matter how much he improves.
 
Bebe said:
Wum. I actually think ozil is brilliant and like many players before him will only hit top form next season. One of my favorite footballers in the world.

But somehow people have decided that because he sucked against bayern he's ballsless. As if he's the first attacker to be choked out of a game by guardiola's possession game.

Time will tell but I think he'll be a star for Arsenal.
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Fair enough, it's damn hard to tell in this thread.
 
alastair said:
I'm happy to disagree on most things. Comments that claim Ozil is lazy, however, are so wrong it's clear that there has been a media brainwash.
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Ah ok, that was what I was trying to ask at least, I wanted to know what you disagreed with, as that's the only unfair thing I could cite in this thread, but yes, if anything the accusation is lazy and unfounded, there are several things I think would be fair to comment on, but "running enough" (Which for me is so un-important anyway) isn't something you can knock him with.
 
A lot of interesting stuff, there's a couple of things I don't quite understand or don't think are coherent though:
- a couple of people have used the (rather poor imo) explanation that he's not appreciated cos he's not British and doesn't have the blood and thunder approach to football and so on. While that may have been the case years ago, I really don't think the public or the media need that anymore to recognize quality. Despite the media probably not being exceptional (though sports media, in any country, is rarely top notch), let's not think it's just a bunch of neanderthals unable to understand the beauty of the player or something. Especially in a league where players such as Mata, Silva, or Hazard are considered as the elite and get plaudits on a regular basis. The problem isn't the style of play. The problem is the impact on the field of the style of play. When you have no influence on the field and it's coupled with a seemingly flegmatic display, it just looks bad, simple as.
- for all the 'media agenda' accusations that are being bandied in here, wasn't it the media at the beginning of the year that had built up his arrival as Arsenal's saviour, and more importantly been very vocal about his start to the league, bigging him up to no ends? (rightly so) I'm not taking the case of Ashton here, he's an idiot (I mean I barely read any UK press yet I know Ashton's an idiot), but the media as a whole. You also have to take into account that media in other countries (I think Bild were critical of his display, in France l'Equipe have already written stuff about him not being great) have noted his flaws, I don't think there's that much to look into there.

Also, Alastair, as much as I enjoy reading your posts, you can't be half condescending at times. You've been accusing everyone who doesn't agree with you of 'jumping on the bandwagon without knowing it' and basically being brainwashed, when most of the reactions in here have been rather measured and have stated elements that are genuinely receivable about Özil. You also have to understand that some of the reaction you get is due to you, pete and maybe others almost invariably coming into here and going over the top with 'best player on the pitch' and other comments of that ilk when he's been just about decent. Absolutely no perspective. One of you (maybe you? or JSArsenal?) recently admitted you wouldn't give his season a 10/10, probably a 7/10. That's fairly reasonable, and it'd be interesting to discuss that. But going on like he's been the dog's bollocks for 9 months now is simply not true, and won't especially give people the will to discuss the subject with a level head.
 
It was me who said I would give a 7/10.

I don't actually mean to be condescending but when you're greeted with post after post of hysteria, it's difficult not to be.

He hasn't reached the level he was at in Madrid. That's clear. He has shown a lot of quality this year though. He has made us a much better team. Unsurprisingly for a player new to the league, his best performances have perhaps come against the middle ranked sides while he adapts to the league.

My gripe stems from myths. The myth that he is lazy, for one. I can't be doing with the idea that he's been a waste of money when he's been here for 3/4 of one season. I can't be doing with the argument that he's a flop on the scale of Torres.

If that comes across as being condescending, I apologise. As I say, disagreement is fine. Stating things that are just wrong aren't.
 
But the major criticism levelled at him, at least in this thread (as I said, I don't read English media), isn't so much laziness as his inability to put his stamp on big games. That was something that was talked about when he was at Madrid already, and has continued over here. I don't think it's a myth, but I think it's due to his style and profile as a player more than anything else, even though mentality probably plays a part.

And don't exaggerate, you don't exactly get 'post after post of hysteria'. The non Arsenal posters who take the time to lay out their views are usually quite measured, once you get past the throwaway post match one liners (which aren't reserved to Özil but to almost every thread on this forum) you have the basis for very interesting discussion.
 
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