Ozil Finally Stepping up for Gunners
Signing in the summer of 2013 for a fee of approximately 42.4m for Arsenal Ozil has often been derided as a player who decorates rather than dictates games, the World Cup winner is one to still cause much debate between Arsenal and non-Arsenal fans.
This season Ozil has scored once and assisted seven times in the Premier League. That’s a superb haul equating as a direct contribution to a goal every 94 minutes.
Since joining Arsenal in 2013 the most assisted Ozil has racked up in a league season is just nine, so he’s surely going to blast his way past that total very soon. Upon joining Arsenal Ozil was highlighted for the huge number of assists he had per season, though with a caveat; most were to Cristiano Ronaldo.
Finally it seems, Ozil is going some way in justifying not only his price-tag, but pivotally his place as the main-man in Arsenal’s attacking triumvirate.
This week the Daily Mirror were speaking to Opta, and it turns out Ozil has the best assist per game rate in Premier League history, now overtaking the great Eric Cantona. Ozil gets an assist every 2.71 games, while Cantona assisted every 2.79, and thirdly Cesc Fabregas comes in with an assist every 2.88 games. Notably, this was only taking into account players who have assisted over 20 goals in the Premier League.
These numbers are good, but Arsene Wenger only last week said that a player of such quality should be scoring more than he manages. Right now Ozil has scored a total of just 10 Premier League goals for the Gunners in a little over two seasons.
However, following the 2-1 victory over Everton Wenger was effusive in his praise for Ozil:
“He is a top-class player, honestly. I think rather than talking about him I would rather watch him play again. If you love to watch football, you love to watch Ozil,” the French manager gushed.
“It is a combination of quality of the touch, intelligence and team attitude. He is a real team player, I said that yesterday in the press conference. He puts his talent at the service of the team and he wants to help the team with everything he does. That makes him efficient.”
Although his primary job is to assist his strikers, the best numbers 10’s should break 10 goals per season, and should the 27 year-old hope to reach the levels of the world’s absolute eite number 10’s, goals are the next step needed to add to his already impressive artillery.
The truth is Ozil probably didn’t want to join Arsenal in 2013—few actually choose to leave Real Madrid—and given such a confidence draining point in his career, it’s of little surprise it may have taken time for the German to get his head in the right place to perform at his peak for Arsenal.
