Mesut Özil: Time to Move Ön?

[OnlyOne]

Not sure you can call a player as inconsistent as he is, 'one of the best in our history.'

Wasn't his fault we lost today but it was concerning to see how little impact he had against a sh*te Southampton side.

I don't blame the loss on him. I think he played like s**t and should have done better in front of the 3-2 goal as he didn't even try to win back the ball. Look at the passage of play again and you can see him actually backing off hoping that the ball would come out to him.

With his salary and lack of effort he deserves every bit of critique coming his way!

Look I understand what you both mean, I wish Özil ran around, pressed and tackled more but he doesn't always do that. The thing with Özil is if he isn't scoring or assisting he's had a 'bad' game when the reality is he probably has had a decent game.

Look everyone wants more from Özil but to go at him after a 'terrible' 20 minute cameo on his first league game back for 4 weeks after our team is already playing poor just seems silly to me.

Also his wages, I mean, what were we supposed to do? Let both him and Alexis go for free in the same year? Would of been so silly.

 

[A_G]

https://streamja.com/qE6G

He did try and get back on the 3rd goal. A tired Torreira lost out on the challenge, then Monreal tried to cut out the pass when he really should have just stayed in position. If he had, Xhaka may have been able to intercept the pass and start an attack himself.

 

[celestis]

Look I understand what you both mean, I wish Özil ran around, pressed and tackled more but he doesn't always do that. The thing with Özil is if he isn't scoring or assisting he's had a 'bad' game when the reality is he probably has had a decent game.

Look everyone wants more from Özil but to go at him after a 'terrible' 20 minute cameo on his first league game back for 4 weeks after our team is already playing poor just seems silly to me.

Also his wages, I mean, what were we supposed to do? Let both him and Alexis go for free in the same year? Would of been so silly.

Think people need to lay off this , you don't know how it's being paid , for all we know it could have been part of the Adidas deal to keep him .

 

[celestis]

https://streamja.com/qE6G

He did try and get back on the 3rd goal. A tired Torreira lost out on the challenge, then Monreal tried to cut out the pass when he really should have just stayed in position. If he had, Xhaka may have been able to intercept the pass and start an attack himself.

Yeah ANM had to track Austin there .

 

[OnlyOne]

Anyway that's my last comment on Özil forever. If you know football you know how good a player he is, way beyond what we have ever had in years.

Bored of defending him because people want him to do stuff he shouldn't be doing and holding him to performances that he should be doing 'every' game that footballers simply can't do consistently apart from maybe 2 in football right now.

 

[freeglennhelder2]

https://streamja.com/qE6G

He did try and get back on the 3rd goal. A tired Torreira lost out on the challenge, then Monreal tried to cut out the pass when he really should have just stayed in position. If he had, Xhaka may have been able to intercept the pass and start an attack himself.

Sorry mate this clip does not show the incident everyone is referring to. It was about a second or so before this.

 

[krackpot]

Eeyikes! What a thread.

 

[A_G]

Sorry mate this clip does not show the incident everyone is referring to. It was about a second or so before this.

I just saw the part after his ill-advised dummy, and you're right he shouldn't have stopped but there wasn't as much danger in that situation imo because Aubameyang was there to make a challenge. I do agree with you that he should've made a challenge regardless but he did try to get back in the end, even if it was too little too late.

The real issue was the dummy, he's the last person in the squad you'd expect to lack awareness in that situation.

 

[Hope]

Blaming Özil for the goal. Lol. Seriously??

 

[gunner4lyfe]

https://streamja.com/qE6G

He did try and get back on the 3rd goal. A tired Torreira lost out on the challenge, then Monreal tried to cut out the pass when he really should have just stayed in position. If he had, Xhaka may have been able to intercept the pass and start an attack himself.

He's jogging back. Also, it was before that where he should have done something

 

[gunner4lyfe]

Yeah ANM had to track Austin there .

Kos saw him and didnt do anything til it was too late

 

[gunner4lyfe]

Anyway that's my last comment on Özil forever. If you know football you know how good a player he is, way beyond what we have ever had in years.

Bored of defending him because people want him to do stuff he shouldn't be doing and holding him to performances that he should be doing 'every' game that footballers simply can't do consistently apart from maybe 2 in football right now.

So he shouldn't have to tackle somebody who is a centimeter in front of him? Also, he's consistently getting high fvcking wages. He should earn that sh!t every game of course.

 

[Camus]

If you think Özil has unequivocally been good for us then I've got some magic beans to sell you.

Not sure how many people here remember how much of a momentous moment it was when we signed him, but if you do then I think it'd be very hard to justify him having been good for us. It was a watershed moment for us. He was seen as THE marquee player, signing an "big name", "ready made", "world class" player from Madrid that we smashed our transfer record multiple times over for. He was the 2nd highest transfer in British history, we'd spent more on a player than City and United. Imagine that. I think at the time he was in the top 10 most expensive transfers in history (we didn't know exactly how much Neymar and Falcao had cost). He's currently the 2nd highest paid player in the PL, on +300k a week. If you know our history with wages then again you know how momentous this is. All of that comes with an expectation, and he's been nowhere near close to meeting that.

Despite what people think about other fans critique of him being "bitter" etc... He's even polarising our own fanbase. I challenge you to name me one truly good player that's ever polarised a fanbase. It just doesn't happen.

Bar 15/16, these stats are not good enough and don't warrant the defence some fans are putting up for him. Even his appearance stats are quite poor, he's only ever played 30+ PL games twice. And we all know a lot of those absences have been for bullshit reasons. He's the only player in our history I can ever remember being given a "breaks", effectively holiday, for no reason.

And his record in big games brings me to the brink of tears. In 41 games against Sp**s, Liverpool, City, United and Chelsea he has 6 goals and 9 assists. When you break it down individually it's even more shocking. Not sure why everyone needs to make special dispensations for Özil, "oh that's just his personality", "that's he's style of play" etc... You leveraged your position as the "biggest" player at the club to get the wage you have, ****ing show it in the "biggest" games. You can't be paid a big boy salary and then expect to be mollycoddled like an infant.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

Fantastic cameo, did absolutely **** all in terms of creating chances when he came on, in fact we really fell off in that regard and then tried a stupid dummy which resulted in Southampton countering and getting the 3rd goal. This season he's really been showing he's worth 350,000 a week.

 

[LG10]

When a 350k pw player comes on and has no impact there is a problem. Have never heard this “he’s just back from injury” excuse before. He was out 4 weeks not months.

 

[Manberg]

When a 350k pw player comes on and has no impact there is a problem. Have never heard this “he’s just back from injury” excuse before. He was out 4 weeks not months.

He had a big impact. He tried to dummy in the middle of the pitch that directly lead to us conceding a goal and losing the game.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

Gotta be honest tho, I've no idea what position he was put in today considering it seemed like we switched to 4-4-2 when Laca came on. It almost seemed like he was just basically told to go anywhere but at times Guendouzi was going wide whenever Özil came central, our midfield was a bit of a shambles when he came on because it seemed like they were all just moving everywhere and as a result our buildup game completely collapsed.

 

[CaseUteinberger]

If you think Özil has unequivocally been good for us then I've got some magic beans to sell you.

Not sure how many people here remember how much of a momentous moment it was when we signed him, but if you do then I think it'd be very hard to justify him having been good for us. It was a watershed moment for us. He was seen as THE marquee player, signing an "big name", "ready made", "world class" player from Madrid that we smashed our transfer record multiple times over for. He was the 2nd highest transfer in British history, we'd spent more on a player than City and United. Imagine that. I think at the time he was in the top 10 most expensive transfers in history (we didn't know exactly how much Neymar and Falcao had cost). He's currently the 2nd highest paid player in the PL, on +300k a week. If you know our history with wages then again you know how momentous this is. All of that comes with an expectation, and he's been nowhere near close to meeting that.

Despite what people think about other fans critique of him being "bitter" etc... He's even polarising our own fanbase. I challenge you to name me one truly good player that's ever polarised a fanbase. It just doesn't happen.

Bar 15/16, these stats are not good enough and don't warrant the defence some fans are putting up for him. Even his appearance stats are quite poor, he's only ever played 30+ PL games twice. And we all know a lot of those absences have been for bullshit reasons. He's the only player in our history I can ever remember being given a "breaks", effectively holiday, for no reason.

And his record in big games brings me to the brink of tears. In 41 games against Sp**s, Liverpool, City, United and Chelsea he has 6 goals and 9 assists. When you break it down individually it's even more shocking. Not sure why everyone needs to make special dispensations for Özil, "oh that's just his personality", "that's he's style of play" etc... You leveraged your position as the "biggest" player at the club to get the wage you have, ****ing show it in the "biggest" games. You can't be paid a big boy salary and then expect to be mollycoddled like an infant.

Thanks for posting. Much better written and argued than much I have seen in this thread.

I have myself given him the tag "world class" but that is a couple of years ago. Now he is just a shadow of a world class player.

 

[Rex Stone]

Gotta be honest tho, I've no idea what position he was put in today considering it seemed like we switched to 4-4-2 when Laca came on. It almost seemed like he was just basically told to go anywhere but at times Guendouzi was going wide whenever Özil came central, our midfield was a bit of a shambles when he came on because it seemed like they were all just moving everywhere and as a result our buildup game completely collapsed.

It was sort of like the old days when Arsène would just chuck big names and strikers off the bench and hope it’d work.

 

[Mrs Bergkamp]

It was sort of like the old days when Arséne would just chuck big names and strikers off the bench and hope it’d work.

And it worked quite well quite often iirc as we grabbed a few points with 4 strikers on the pitch. I really loved those moments.