Having badly struggled for form since joining the Gunners, the German superstar should perhaps be moved on for the benefit of all parties involved.
On arrival in North London, Mesut Ozil joined with a stellar reputation and received a hero’s welcome on debut v Sunderland. His £42m transfer fee, a club record, was seen as the beginning of a new approach from Arsene Wenger. The end of conserved spending and the dawn of a new era, in which the club would begin paying vast sums of money to bring the highest calibre of names to Arsenal.
However it hasn’t worked out. Despite an explosive start and a few encouraging cameo’s, Ozil has generally looked a shadow of the player who lit up La Liga previously. In the highly physical Premier League, he appears frail and lacking in strength. He has struggled to influence games as he would have like, heaping the pressure on his shoulders. Many expected that he would find his feet in his second season in the English capital but unfortunately, little has changed. A bad injury ruled him out until the New Year but on returning, he has still been the worrying enigma of before.
I have believed all along that the Premier League is all wrong for him. It’s fast, frenetic and powerful. So you can understand why this wouldn’t suit a player who lacks bulk and plays the game at a slow pace. La Liga was a great fit, so you wonder why he didn’t just stay and fight for his place at Real Madrid. Moving to England was a bad career choice and the German has been paying for it.
Furthermore Arsene Wenger isn’t the right sort of manager to coach Ozil. He is a very up and down guy, constantly needing somebody on his back, pushing him to achieve more. This is why he enjoyed so much success under Jose Mourinho at Madrid most probably. Wenger though, isn’t like this. He believes in taking a more relaxed approach and trusting the players to just let their ability shine. He is undoubtedly a great coach of players but he is not someone who will regularly have a go at individuals or make a huge effort to motivate them to perform. Ozil needs a less tranquil character.
I am sure of the fact that he will never regain his form of old at Arsenal and at a crucial stage in the young man’s career, he should be looking to move on. This experience has regrettably been an unfruitful one and he should just put it behind him, before finding a club in which he can flourish once more. Careers in football are short, so you can’t waste time. He needs to move on before it’s too late.
Selling Ozil could also be beneficial for Arsenal, as it helps nobody playing in a team with a passenger. They need players that are the opposite of the midfielder. Players that work hard and can compete physically. The burden of trying to make this transfer work may well have affected the team as well. Attempting to get him back into form will most probably have been a tiresome job for Wenger.
The fact of the matter is that he wouldn’t be a huge loss at all for the club, as his impact has been minimal in the famous red and white jersey as of yet. They wouldn’t exactly be losing a star man or somebody who is genuinely contributing a great deal to the team. In fact selling Ozil for a considerable sum of money (which they could well manage) and buying a top class replacement, who could do the business, could be a real coup.
It is obvious that Wenger is an admirer of Ozil but it’s time he came to the conclusion that the experiment hasn’t worked. There is no sign of improvement or that things may well get better any time soon. All we are witnessing are just further reminders of how he has suffered a fall from grace. Moving the Word Cup winner on would be beneficial for all parties as I said before and is for me, the most logical solution. Although then again Arsene hasn’t done logical in the transfer markets of recent years, so I’m not holding my breath on Ozil waving auf widersehen to English football just yet.
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