I too have no agenda either way and despite being really disappointed with his performances, I still am delighted that we signed him and feel that it could have been a pivotal move had we followed up his signing with recruiting more quality last summer but of course that chance has been lost
When you look at ozil you have to wonder what is wrong -
1. Is it just first season in a new country syndrome ? Maybe and we have all seen it before but I cant get away from the feeling that he doesn't want to be here. His reaction at the end of the citeeh game was very very poor and rightly drew a strong reaction from BFG but his general demeanour suggests an unhappy guy and whether that is for football or personal reasons I don't know. We have to acknowledge that most players would view any move from real Madrid as a step down
2. Is it for tactical reasons ? Without turning this into an anti wenker discussion, you have to think that the system doesn't suit him - he is a wonderfully creative player when used in a free floating role but the problem is that ozil, cazorla and rosicky are all the same type of players and are all looking to make the same runs and use the same space and that in itself will curb his effectiveness. Is he being picked to play on the wing or in the centre ? Only an absolute braindead gobshite could play ozil, cazorla, ramsey, bendtner or diaby on the wing and expect it to work cos
THEY ARE NOT WINGERS
3. I feel that the lack of a pacy mobile quality centre forward is also having a negative pass on both ozil and cazorla - when you have quality players who can pass a ball through the eye of a needle, you need players that can run onto those fine through balls and with the greatest respect to giroud, he is not that player.
4. Is he destined to be a player that was always drift in and out of games ? I used to watch him getting subbed every single game at Madrid and I thought that the portugese moaning cock was treating him shabbily but now I wonder if there are fitness/stamina/concentration issues that were driving those substitutions
Solutions
1. For me, if we are absolutely committed to playing without proper wingers then we should change to a 4-3-1-2 system with ozil playing off a front two. It still isn't my preferred option but we should be changing the system to suit the players we have and build around our best players and pozil and santi are those players
Going forward I seriously think we need a revamp of not just our formation but also of the type of players we have - we simply do not have a ball winner in midfield and that has been the case for a few years now. As I have said a few times, Fernando (porto) looks like the type of player we need but to date we have opted for a more technical type of player when that key position should always be filled with a ball winner. In my opinion ozil and cazorla need a strong physical type of player who will win the ball and then give it to them to do their magic
For me ozil has 12 months to validate his signing - if he plays first few months of next season like he has done to date, then we need to accept that he isn't going to work out and move on. However right now I would be very hesitant of picking out ozil above other players and laying the blame at his feet - yes he needs to improve his performances and attitude but I am in favour of giving him that time to do so
