Take it Easy On Him!

I’ve been so disappointed to see Mesut Özil come under heavy criticism over the past few weeks. You expect it from pundits and fans of other teams, but never from your own fans. A lot of people are saying he is off-form and the criticism is deserved, but I just don’t agree with that.

Because we spent so much on Özil there is a level of expectancy and I can understand that for some people he just hasn’t lived up to what they were hoping to see from him. Statistically he isn’t actually doing that bad: he covers a lot of ground during games and his contribution to most matches is evident.

He has scored 5 goals and assisted 11 and that is only half of what he scored and assisted last season for Real Madrid, so he’s still on course for achieving or even beating that. He is not a lazy player. He is working hard and trying his best to fit within an established team and when things go wrong his frustrations are laid bare for all of us to see.

When he first joined it’s fair to say his first few months, leading up to December, was when we saw him at his best. But that was also when Arsenal were playing better football. The standard has dropped slightly since then and whether that is due to the loss of Ramsey and Walcott or injury or a lack of physical energy after a run of tough games is unclear.

But, it has affected the whole team and not just Ozil. His penalty miss last week was an obvious sign that he just needs to take a break, it’s a lot of pressure when you are playing against national team mates.

Sometimes you can only be as good as the team around you and despite the fact that Arsenal have made some major improvement this season, there are still lots of issues within the team that need tweaking. The fact is, we simply don’t have the same quality of players as Real Madrid in every position. We are still in desperate need of strengthening up and that is imperative, so players like Özil can fulfil their true ability.

I think there is still so much to see from our new German this year. He has already added to the team and few off games doesn’t make him a bad player. If we invest in an new striker in the summer then I can honestly see Özil thriving and becoming a very important player for us.