Sánchez dropped deep, but he didn’t dictate play. He made hopelessly over-direct passes, with no one really to pass to, doing his typical over-eager Sánchez thing. We would’ve been better off if he didn’t drop into that space.
I don’t blame Sánchez either, mind, our build-up play was so thoroughly incoherent that even when he did drop deep, by the time it got to him there was nothing on, and it was in too deep of a space to do anything interesting anyways.
Let’s just say I don’t like the “he didn’t take the game by the scruff of the neck” critique. It’s very British/Madridista/Argentine
Actually, the more I think about it, this is an uncharacteristically poor argument from you, gunnerpr. I only saw the 2nd half but I just saw him barely able to even get a sniff of the ball and when he did he had nothing on and did pretty well to hold onto it as long as he did. Unless the 1st half was much different and he was very imprecise, making poor decisions (like against Boro where I thought he played very poorly), to criticise him because he didn’t abandon his position, where he is most dangerous, to go try and do someone else’s job, using Sánchez, who does this often to the team’s detriment as an example, well, let’s just say I strongly disagree with that thinking.
Anyways, it’s clear, if anyone’s a victim of Wenger’s poor management/poor squad building/perennially shit midfields now, it’s Özil. And yeah, if you watched today’s game and thought Özil was one to criticise, we view football very differently I suppose.
He wasn’t quite at it but the midfield didn’t help him out at all, it’s all well and good saying he should drop deep but is that where we want him?
Sanchez dropping deep should not be used as an argument for Özil doing the same since all Sanchez did was vacate space and leave us without a focal point time and time again, if Özil dropped deep who’s actually dictating further up field?
An Elneny/Coq pivot is so fucking negative and bereft of ideas, if Santi isn’t playing Xhaka should be on the pitch it’s as simple as that.
FFS my post really is just as simple as… Ozil had 0 influence on this game. He could of had more influence by dropping deep and picking the ball up of coquelin more often.
Your definition of “great” here is a little questionable.
Yes he wasn’t at it but when you’re an attacking midfielder in the vein of a #10 and your midfield is both static and uninspiring it makes your job a lot harder.
Well, you said a bit more than that (ie ‘any criticism he gets is warranted’), and that’s what I disagreed with. Anyways the point is he really couldn’t’ve, not to any actual benefit to the team anyways.
He could have also just stood on the ball once in a while and waited for options. I feel like ever we have Alexis playing upfront our game is so fixated on quick breaks that we’d rather play forward out of a disadvantaged position than actually went for a solid build up. It doesn’t help though that when we try to create some build up that we can be the slowest fucking team on this planet and that the guy who’s supposed to be our center forward is more concerned about occupying the left wing than actually offering himself for a pass upfront.
Was he not marked? That’s normally the reason he he’s invisible. This is Mourinho after all. Look at that 5 second clip, Herrera busting a gut to make sure he’s not the one to get the ball.
Doesn’t matter how you look at it people will always look to the mega stars and genuine world class talent to impact the outcome of games. Ozil is the teams best player and a world class talent and his minimal impact on the game is rightly being criticised. To blame the lacklustre midfield for Ozil game is just harking it back to 13/14 when there was always an excuse for how poorly he was playing at the time.
Ozil is rightly praised for the huge impact he has on winning and should rightly be criticised for being subpar. We know what he’s capable of and when he performs far below his capabilities it isn’t sensible to try and find reasons to justify it and sometimes just accept he had a bad game and needs to rebound in the coming fixtures.
Well he wasn’t playing poorly in 13/14 haha. He was creating more chances/min than anyone…he wasn’t quite at the level he’s capable of but still was playing at a very high level, in a team that, again, wasn’t really doing much to maximise his potential.
It’s not about finding reasons, it’s about what’s obvious, and that’s that Özil had no opportunity to impact the game because of the massive structural flaws in the team. Again, it’s the same thing Madridistas did-- if you talk to any Madridista today they’ll say “Özil is brilliant, but he’s so inconsistent”. Özil really especially inconsistent at all, what was inconsistent was the tactical set-up under Mourinho which at times left him marginalised, and under us, well, the quality of player around him (because the tactical set up is consistently pretty poor).
Inconsistencies in performance are not being totally shut out of the game because you’re midfield can’t supply you the ball and because the quality of your teammate is so low/your team’s tactical set-up is so incoherent that it’s easy for the opponent to mark you out of the game. Inconsistencies in performance are Boro, where he was strangely off the pace and inaccurate, and a couple other games where he looked imprecise/off-the-pace this season, where I criticised him.
How can you say Ozil wasn’t bad in 13/14. He was embarrassing to watch at times lol. After his initial bright start he really tailed off and could barely hold onto the ball at times
