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Mesut Özil: 2019/20 Performances

Why Isn't Özil Playing?


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sdotzdot

Established Member
It’s always interesting to read people arguing there is an agenda against him when at the same time there’s constant excuses and conspiracies to figure out why this guy isn’t playing.

You don’t need to try to assume a reason, if you’ve used your eyes to watch this guy play for us for the past two years or so your answer is right there. The guy is finished, the game tactically has passed him by and he also just doesn’t care, it isn’t rocket science.

Probably one of the most shielded players by fans I’ve ever seen at the club.

Reckon the best thing for people who recognise this fraud for who he is rather than his social media antics is to just let him fade into obscurity. Bye bye Özil, can’t say it’s been a pleasure.
 

GDeep™

League is very weak
theo-and-robert-pires.jpg
 

Oxeki

Match Day Thread Merchant
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Country: Nigeria

Player:Saliba
Ideal scenario; What does AM imagine Mesut doing when his playing career is over?
Could you guys imagine him staying on in our structure somehow? I can't. Isn't it the dream for all of our talismanic players to stay on somehow and contribute to a healthy club structure? .
Mesut coming back and joining the back room staff after he retires?

No thanks.
Don't want his attitude spreading like cancer to the upcoming generation of talents we have coming through
 

Dj_sds -

Active Member
we paid 8M for Doozi and a fat wage ....and he got 1 assist and 0 goals in two seasons, couldnt defend, couldnt control the midfield and couldnt attack. He behaved badly on the field and then had a falling out, and hasnt played since and didnt send any congratulatory message on the FA cup win.

Yet the vitriol is reserved for Özil. This is not a footballing criticism, this is plain bullying.

The fact you have to compare a seasoned professional and world cup winner to a 20 year old at the start of his career to prove a point just shows how low the Özil cult has fallen.
 

Camron

Photoshop King
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Player:Martinelli
I read reports he'd like to stay beyond this season tbf. It's not his fault he got the contract.

Ideal scenario; What does AM imagine Mesut doing when his playing career is over?
Could you guys imagine him staying on in our structure somehow? I can't. Isn't it the dream for all of our talismanic players to stay on somehow and contribute to a healthy club structure? Say what you want about Mesut but he could influence a generation of upcoming Hale End midfielders.
I doubt it's the kinda influence Arteta is looking to transfer to our youngsters.
 

kash2

More Consistent Than Arteta
The fact you have to compare a seasoned professional and world cup winner to a 20 year old at the start of his career to prove a point just shows how low the Özil cult has fallen.

awww... thats your best comeback... a sidestep strawman.
 

kash2

More Consistent Than Arteta
Come on mate this guy was in the form of his life before signing a massive retirement contract then basically mentally checking out. I know he played 3 good games in europe after signing that season but the difference in performance was massive.

I know that the standard defence of Özil now is "don't blame him for getting a big contract blame the club" but lets get this right. The club offered him this contract based on his performance preceeding it. Most people supported this descision at the time. And then this cretin gives up and his defenders still don't see the issue that people have with him.

between thinking whether Özil mentally checked out or the haters did... i would go with the professional successfull footballer.
 

Ibadan

Thread Bump Police
Mesut coming back and joining the back room staff after he retires?

No thanks.
Don't want his attitude spreading like cancer to the upcoming generation of talents we have coming through

I'm genuinely surprised by how cancerous you think he would be. Fair enough if you guys think his laid-back attitude on the pitch can sometimes be infuriating. The "Lazy Özil" trope, yeah whatever.

I don't think it's fair to disparage his charisma and potential influence on upcoming players though. If you were a young midfielder coming up through Hale End and Özil was around in some capacity, I doubt you'd feel anything but joy and pride.
Even if he stayed on as an official/unofficial club ambassador I'd be happy.

Sure OK, the Erdogan stuff is a bit dodgy but I doubt your average 16 year old is too involved with the geopolitics of Europe to give a damn.
 

kash2

More Consistent Than Arteta

i like football. I watch it. I seen Özil playing as recently as a few months back. You guys can keep saying that he is a bad footballer....but it wont make a difference. Thats for those who cant believe their own eyes.

Özil did this club a big favor by getting Emery chucked out and holding the line till Arteta arrived. He is more Arsenal than any of you haters.

never have i seen anyone post a video or compilation to show that Özil's quality has dropped. Its just yards and yards of deranged ramblings and rants.
 

Godwin1

Very well-known
between thinking whether Özil mentally checked out or the haters did... i would go with the professional successfull footballer.
Well it's not hard to figure out but ok let me think for you. A footballer who isn't mentally checked out would probably want to leave and play football rather than not get picked and post on twitter after every game.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
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Country: England
Another summer. Another Mesut Özil-shaped window that appears jammed when it would be no bad thing to breathe in a bit of fresh air. Another suffocating stand-off.

The extraordinary stasis that is Özil’s Arsenal career right now is both odder than ever and painfully familiar. Here he is sidelined from the main event, a distant part of the FA Cup celebration only via social media. But anyone who watches Arsenal knows they have missed creativity between the lines this season and that the one man in their squad with that specific skill set has been shunted out the picture. Entering into the last year of a contract that has caused a strain on both sides, the question of whether there might be any movement shadows the summer.

It has been like this on and off for two years now. Crazy as it seems, this relationship seemed fractured just six months after his extraordinary contract was signed on the last day of the winter market of January 2018. Might this window be any different? From Arsenal’s side, the desire is strong to move on from Özil so they can free themselves from the burden of their most expensive salary, spent on a player whose influence at the club has dwindled. They want to reinvest those funds elsewhere. But that depends on Özil agreeing to leave and on his part, there is no change whatsoever from the stance that he intends to honour the contract and make himself available to play for Arsenal until completion in 2021.

It all feels like those painfully destructive latter stages of a break-up. It gets to that point where it is human nature to take almost anything the other party does in a bad light. The two parties seem miles apart. Allowing Özil to leave the country the week before the FA Cup final — because Arsenal knew for sure he wouldn’t be involved — when a trophy is at stake is a very weird kind of footballing parable. Gabriel Martinelli and Shkodran Mustafi were there on their crutches. William Saliba, who hasn’t even played a minute of football for Arsenal, was part of the happy throng on the Wembley pitch. Sokratis Papastathopoulos, with barely a look in since Mikel Arteta took over, was available to come on as a late substitute and cherish the moment. No Özil, no Matteo Guendouzi. That felt sharp.

The reality is that it is only a question of time and money until Arsenal and Özil go their separate ways but finding a solution before the summer of 2021 is far from straightforward.

There are three options in the Arsenal-Özil conundrum, but all of them tricky:

1) Pay the player up for the remainder of his contract, plus a possible early termination payment, to move on. The problem here is finding the money to do that — in any financial situation like this, banks would always prefer any business to spread repayments over 52 weeks rather than trying to cobble together the sort of lump sum that Arsenal can ill afford right now.

2) Arsenal wait for the market to get going and hope there is a deal somewhere to be had. If a club that Özil would be happy to join is at least willing take on a portion of his salary, perhaps Arsenal would be satisfied to make up the rest. Any saving is worth consideration. But in the post-COVID market, it’s difficult to imagine too many clubs eager to pay the majority of that £350,000 per week salary.

3) Go into next season with the problem unresolved, the door still open to a reconciliation. But the prospects of all-round happiness seem less likely than more “what about Özil?” questions and bad vibes when their most expensive asset doesn’t play.

The combination of his salary, his reduced impact on the pitch, his body language, and the awkward dynamic — the squad are aware its highest-paid member is on the fringes — all add up to a situation Arsenal want to do without. But how? A contract worth almost £20 million to Özil in wages next season is not going to go away painlessly.

On the other side of this mountain is Özil. Taking it as a given that while money does bring considerable benefits in life, it cannot buy any guarantees for happiness or health, Özil has found periods of the last two years confusing. He is good at putting on a strong gaze, at smiling and looking good for the cameras, but things going badly in public never feels great.

Özil has been omitted from several games this season. For matches, he has carried an injury. For others, he has been on the bench but unused. But most damning of all are those fixtures he has simply not been selected for at all, whatever his fitness. For two different coaches to reach that same outcome underscores the problem. Fitting him into the system in a fruitful way doesn’t seem to be working. Özil has scored once this season and provided three assists. For the most expensively paid player in the club’s history to present with that data demonstrates something isn’t right.

“If you look at the way Manchester City play, which is the way Arteta wants Arsenal to play, can Özil play that way?” ponders a leading Premier League data analyst. “We don’t know, it hasn’t been tried necessarily, but it’s based on positional discipline, defensive input. Özil doesn’t seem like a guy you can motivate that easily. He is not lazy. He can run 12km per game. That’s a good start. The type of defending that’s required in the system doesn’t mean you have to be N’Golo Kante, it means you just have to be disciplined and stick your foot in.”

That is not Özil’s strength, so questions persist about his suitability to the strategy into which Arsenal are trying to evolve.

There have been times when his absence, either from matches or training, didn’t make sense to him. Going back to the start of a fresh chapter for Arsenal when Unai Emery arrived, he got the feeling he was not to be trusted in away games. Then, after a spell out the team altogether, the coach came out in the open and ascribed Özil’s non-selection as a club decision. The sense that people outside the coaching staff were in on his exclusion was unusual and troubling.

It began to build from there. Özil has carried the reputation for picking up slightly mysterious injuries to the point that some critics wonder if his “bad back” is a euphemism. But sometimes, if he had a small injury, he would go through the usual routines — a hospital check, a short rest, a few sessions to sharpen up with the injured players — but then would not necessarily be reintegrated to first-team training according to a normal timeline. There have been occasions when his time away from the main group, training with fitness coaches, was prolonged when he felt ready to join the first team. He feels he was kept at arm’s length, wondering if it was deliberate and why.

Özil is not, and has never been, the most energetic trainer. He has always been more leisurely than fired up, but he found this development unexpected and odd. At one point, he wondered if he was almost being isolated from his closest friends, especially those who were always part of his gang, namely Mustafi and Sead Kolasinac.

Özil’s status in the squad has plummeted since football’s restart. He has been frozen out again. When Arteta first took over as head coach, he started his former team-mate consistently and was supportive. But post-lockdown, he didn’t give him a single minute on the pitch. Twice, Arsenal’s No 10 was included in the squad of 20 but watched as younger, less creative players were chosen as substitutes to come on ahead of him.

So what changed?

During lockdown, Özil became a father and was given a few days off to be with his wife and new daughter. After a couple of days back training with the group, there were a few queries over how fit and committed he was. When he was left out of the team, Arteta was hoping for a positive reaction, watching to see if the player would prove to him how much he wanted to compete for his place. Arteta, an ambitious young coach at 38 years old, has been consistent in his non-negotiables and expectations. He has made it clear when he didn’t get the response he wanted. That gauntlet was laid down at different times to Özil, Guendouzi, Dani Ceballos and Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Some bounced back in the way he wanted. Others didn’t.

The other event during lockdown that bought Özil’s relations with Arsenal into focus was the club’s proposed pay cut. Özil’s camp requested more time and more information about how this would impact on the club’s spending capacities. Özil was willing to take a bigger share of a pay cut but was unwilling to sign up for the conditions Arsenal laid out without more detail. The club wanted everyone to be in it together and, in the end, there was only one outlier.

Was he frozen out simply for football reasons or penalised for not going along with the group? Arteta has spoken strongly about his desire for everyone to be “on the boat” having a united front. That was part of the idea sold to the players about the pay cut. It is not hard to imagine this as a contributing reason why Özil was cast adrift.

Things have happened that have made him feel uncomfortable. Unwelcome. Untrusted. It chips away. It creates doubts. Is this situation sustainable? Is it enough to make you feel tempted to move on, so you can feel personally valued again?

Özil is far from the first sportsman who has been on the receiving end of a club pushing for a move. It works the other way too often enough, with players making a nuisance of themselves to gain some leverage in the tussle between fulfilling a contract and seeking an exit. An unhappy or demotivated player can be a difficult distraction in a group or can find themselves isolated. Issues can be forced either way.

To an extent, though, if Arsenal were hoping Özil would reach a point where he wants out, it seems to be having the opposite effect. All this has done is make him dig in his heels. He wonders if he is being punished for the money he earns, money the club were happy to give him in with a shiny new contract in 2018.

The statistical, non-emotional, non-financial assessment of Özil’s contribution to the team is another interesting layer to this story. The decline in his number of goal contributions is a worry in any assessment. There are many potential reasons: he is getting older and playing with less frequency, which interrupts rhythm; the team around him has changed in terms of the number of creative players with whom he can combine; and, in general, old-school No 10s are being asked to perform different roles, to which it can be difficult to adapt.

Arsène Wenger spoke on this subject in an interview with So Foot recently: “We have progressively taken the NBA route, that of a very ‘athleticised’ sport. You only have one-vs-ones, shots for three points… today, as in basketball, certain creative players are being eliminated, under the simple pretext that they are not athletic enough. In time, the danger is that football develops into a sport where players run like crazy to win the ball back as quickly as possible, but who don’t know what to do when they actually have it in their possession. We have to keep a balance.”

Wenger was an ideal coach for Özil. A collector of dextrous, nimble playmakers, he gave Özil the freedom to maximise his gifts. The former World Cup winner, whose assist numbers shone for years, is best in a team that dominates possession. But here’s the thing. With the change in coach, Arsenal went from averaging around 200 individual possessions in the final third per 90 minutes under Wenger to under 100 under Emery. That is not a circumstance to naturally suit any creative playmaker.

The other significant change last summer that has had a direct effect on this season is that Arsenal decimated the number of creators in the squad. This is a club who not long ago had such a glut of No 10 types: Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri, Alex Hleb, Tomas Rosicky, Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Santi Cazorla, Özil. And then there was one.

When Arsenal let Ramsey, Alex Iwobi and Henrikh Mkhitaryan go last summer (even if the latter two were not considered to be fundamental players), they dramatically reduced the number of between-the-lines players at the club. Özil always plays best when he has others around him to combine with.

“Özil doesn’t like to play by himself between the lines,” observes another Premier League data analyst. “The entire City system that Arteta likes depends on two playmakers in those positions. Arsenal effectively have zero. It’s crazy. It was crazy to give away all those players without a replacement.”

In 2015-16, his peak season, Özil had 28 goal involvements from 45 appearances. His creativity was at the hub of the way the team played. His link-up with the likes of Cazorla and Ramsey around him, Alexis Sanchez buzzing around, the contrasting attackers to aim for in the big man Olivier Giroud and the sprinter Theo Walcott, gave him a variety of options to catch his eye.

His touches per game in the final third have dropped off significantly in the past couple of years. In 2015-16 it was 45. Last season that fell to 28. A player who enjoys needling clever passes needs plenty of the ball and most recently when he plays he sees far less of it.

Is there a decline in Özil’s quality, a decline in his conditions that means he can’t play his best, or both? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly. But what we do know is that the current state does not bring the best out of either player or club.

The original Özil transfer from Real Madrid in 2013 was something of which Arsenal were so proud. After years of being regarded as a “selling club” that reluctantly lived with their best players leaving, suddenly they laid a serious glove in the market for a world-renowned player at a pre-peak age from an elite club. There was so much excitement, people all over the world started to put umlauts on random “o”s in their social media tags in his honour.

It came about because Real wanted to shunt out a player under contract so they could raise money to spend elsewhere. Sound familiar? They were desperate to buy Gareth Bale (who, in one of those weird twists of fate, now finds himself pushed to the periphery at the Bernabeu while another gargantuan contract plays out). The story goes that Real originally looked to offload Angel Di Maria and Karim Benzema to buy Bale. Arsenal were very much in the conversation.

But when those moves were blocked by Real’s coach Carlo Ancelotti, Madrid decided Özil could be their bargaining chip. Arsenal duly shattered their transfer record and were thrilled with the outcome.

The renewal, when it was signed in 2018, had been on the table for a while. It was a similar scenario to that faced with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang now: the cost of a player who can instantly replace their contribution to the team would involve a huge transfer fee, with wages on top. It can be more economical to give a wage hike directly to the player to stay.

But down the line, those wages still need to be worth it.

Özil turns 32 in two months. The word is he wants to play. He wants to play even beyond the expiry of this infamous contract next summer. If the impasse does continue until then, one thing is for sure: it won’t be for a lack of trying as Arsenal push for — and Özil resists against — a premature end.
Tears to my eyes reading this, proper sad.

Definitely the club trying to force him out, I’m not buying Arteta freezing him out because he refused to take a pay cut. That shouldn’t affect the football side of things.

Article flat out says that his return from injury would be inexplicably delayed then says that he’s been frozen out since being the only player to refuse to take a pay cut without finding out more. Not happy with how this formerly classy club are treating one of the best players of his generation. Smh.
 
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