*Official* English Football Season 2013-14

[Jarquis]

Özil injured for a few weeks so get in the criticisms of him 'going missing' against City and Chelsea in early

 

[Cabinet96]

Too lazy to get out of bed in the morning obvs.

 

[GIMH]

Bottom four anyway. ****

 

[Cabinet96]

I agree he was ****. It's like he wasn't even there in the second half.

 

[Eds]

"Arsenal claimed" is the worst bit. Who the **** does he think he is?

 

[Cabinet96]

Mail put out a similar article. Claiming laziness etc. Was also published before the match finished.

 

[Nate]

better than Suarez

 

[Jarquis]

Spurs spend £100m+ on ****e that wasn't good enough to play against Chelsea and that barely drew a comment

 

[Uppercut]

Yeah you'd almost think Mesut Ozil playing like ****e was more of a story than Nader Chadli playing like ****e.

 

[Cabinet96]

I think the issue is more that he could wear the wrong shoelace aglet to a training session and it would still bring more headlines.

 

[Cabinet96]

better than Suarez

Another solid contribution.

 

[Tom Halsey]

Yeah you'd almost think Mesut Ozil playing like ****e was more of a story than Nader Chadli playing like ****e.

That's a fair point, but tbf the reaction to Ozil is still hyperbolic IMO. I agree in so far as IMO he isn't (and never was) as good as everyone seemed to think he was up until 6 weeks or so ago. I don't think he actually has played badly though in the past 6 weeks, with the exception of the Liverpool game. He just hasn't played very well either. I think he has merited criticism only if it's for failing to live up to expectations but then the expectations were hardly his fault. I certainly think some of the stuff I have read in the press has been way OTT anyway.

 

[Furball]

Özil hasn't played badly all season ffs. The "problem" is that he's contributing with solid 7/10 performances when people expect more from him.

 

[Tom Halsey]

That's more or less what I said.

 

[Uppercut]

I think he has merited criticism only if it's for failing to live up to expectations but then the expectations were hardly his fault.

Yeah this is pretty much it. I mean, they're criticising him for not working hard when Arsenal don't have the ball. Were they even watching him play back when they were building him up?

It's like they got a puppy for christmas, loved it for three months then started getting really angry with it for not being a cat.

But I do think his performances have been poor. The will to get on the ball isn't really there at the moment, so given that he does nothing defensively and doesn't score many, they're really getting very little out of him. It's not like a dire Rooney performances where he constantly fouls people and shins the ball into touch. To churn out a cliché, he just sort of goes missing. And he did it in the big CL games for Madrid a lot too.

 

[Tom Halsey]

But I do think his performances have been poor. The will to get on the ball isn't really there at the moment, so given that he does nothing defensively and doesn't score many, they're really getting very little out of him. It's not like a dire Rooney performances where he constantly fouls people and shins the ball into touch. To churn out a cliché, he just sort of goes missing. And he did it in the big CL games for Madrid a lot too.

Yeah the bolded is certainly true.

As for playing poorly or not, I think Ozil is just a player that needs his team to be playing well to be effective. You could obviously argue that's not a particularly good trait but there are quite a lot of players like that and there is no denying that Ozil is effective when the team is playing well. The problem is that he does, as you say, become completely ineffectual when the team isn't playing well as without his side getting the ball to him regularly he basically vanishes. And Arsenal, by and large, haven't played well in recent weeks.

I suppose it comes down to semantics because I wouldn't really term this playing badly. He hasn't done much wrong, albeit chiefly because he hasn't done much at all. Obviously either way he's not been particularly useful but I do think that in all of the games Arsenal have failed to win recently, he's not been the sole problem (with the possible exception of the Liverpool game where he was genuinely terrible but still not the sole problem). I suppose my point is that looking at headlines like the one posted by Cabinet above you'd almost think that dropping Ozil would solve all of Arsenal's problems, which just isn't the case.

 

[Furball]

Yeah this is pretty much it. I mean, they're criticising him for not working hard when Arsenal don't have the ball. Were they even watching him play back when they were building him up?

It's like they got a puppy for christmas, loved it for three months then started getting really angry with it for not being a cat.

But I do think his performances have been poor. The will to get on the ball isn't really there at the moment, so given that he does nothing defensively and doesn't score many, they're really getting very little out of him. It's not like a dire Rooney performances where he constantly fouls people and shins the ball into touch. To churn out a cliché, he just sort of goes missing. And he did it in the big CL games for Madrid a lot too.

Can't agree with that at all.

 

[Jarquis]

Yeah, there's so much of the criticism which just isn't true and is plainly wrong. Uppercut is usually really good for being one of the ones to call out lazy media stereotypes for what they are but I'm really not on board with him on this one.

Özil is still one of the best in the world at what he does, it's just he's also relatively reliant on certain other factors to be really magnificently effective. I mean, Santi Cazorla is a phenomenal footballer but there's a reason that when Özil took his spot in behind the striker our performance as a side went through the roof. He's not a Bale or Suarez in the sense he won't pick the ball up 40 yards out and score a magnificent solo goal but he brings so many other things to the table (not saying they don't ftr). His movement is phenomenal, he creates so much space for players i.e. Ramsey in the early part of the season. Footballing intelligence is beyond belief and he's got the vision and technical ability to utilise it. These all sound like cliches, I can appreciate, but go look at Giroud's second against Everton where Özil literally pointed to Giroud where he wanted him to run and then he rolled it perfectly into his stride. That in turn kinda goes to demonstrate a further point - that at times his effect is somewhat nullified by his own team mates. Giroud does a lot of good work with his back to goal but his movement's not great besides front post runs, he doesn't stretch teams in behind and he misses an awful lot of chances; its easy just to look at assist numbers and forget about the chances that are spurned.

I dunno, it's certain other things that annoy me too. If I hear one more criticism of his lack of running or effort I'll explode. I've watched him live a few times this year and he almost never stops moving and game after game he's up there in terms of ground covered.

I just think next season he's going to make everybody look stupid - a further improved (and fit) Ramsey, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain and a truly world class striker and he'll run the show.

Regardless of all that, statistically he's been just as good as (if not better than) almost every other similar player in their first season in the PL.

Probably a huge overreaction but I do genuinely find that the way the media treat/portray Arsenal is a bit of a joke but I guess every fan of any team says that sort of thing at some point. Just as an example I saw an article earlier that listed "10 reasons why everybody should want Liverpool to win the league" - I got through "they've not won it for ages", "lower transfer spend than rivals", "genius manager" before giving up.

 

[Nate]

Another solid contribution.

It was all for you bb. <3

Agree that he's been decent, if not good, but he has hardly lived up to expectations.

And no-one cares about Spurs itbt.

 

[Ray.]

Regardless of all that, statistically he's been just as good as (if not better than) almost every other similar player in their first season in the PL.

Eden Hazard. 8)