Furball
Evil Scotsman
I think Arsenal were always outside shots anyway; after a rough time last summer the team really began to gel and find their feet towards the back end of the season and Arsenal being the only top 4 club to have retained their manager was always a slight advantage to Arsenal with regards to the rest of the top 4.
Where the signing of Özil is a game changer is what it signifies. Arsenal are now a serious club to be reckoned with financially, which has been their Achilles heel in the Abramovich era in the Premier League. Not only are the finances there, but Wenger is also willing to spend serious money, crucially on the right players. He made a very telling comment after the Spurs game about the Gareth Bale saga, where he said that there were a handful of players who he considered to be worth more than £50m. The inference was that Bale clearly wasn't, but what Wenger was also inferring there was that if he felt that a player was worth the money then he'd spend it. That's a massive game changer to a club who's MO over the last 10 years has been picking up talented youngsters cheaply, developing them into really good players then selling them as the player got frustrated with not winning trophies, leaving the team perenially 1 or 2 players short of being genuine contenders.
The other advantage Özil's signing has is that it makes it exponentially easier to attract top drawer talent. If Arsenal go back in for Suarez in January, not only can Wenger pitch whatever he wants to Suarez vis a vis Arsenal's title ambitions, but he can also point to Özil and say "oh yeah, you've got this guy playing behind you so you'll get hundreds of chances to score goals."
The squad depth is still a concern and I don't think Arsenal will become title winners over night. But getting Özil is the first step towards ending the trophy drought sooner rather than later.
