Paul Parker: Arsenal can't win the Premier League, but Mesut Ozil shouldn't be the scapegoat
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Updated 21/12/2016 at 23:29 GMT
Arsenal have limitations and can't challenge for the title... but it's unfair on Mesut Ozil to blame him for those failings – says Paul Parker.
Mesut Özil Arsenal
Image credit: Eurosport
I rate Mesut Ozil very, very highly. He’s been Arsenal’s saviour in many games, but he has one poor game and all of a sudden he gets both barrels. It’s not right.
Ozil’s always the first one to get criticized at Arsenal. He’s the easy one to have a go at because of the way he plays. It was similar with Mata and Chelsea and then Manchester United – they are always the first to be highlighted because they are seen as liabilities when their teams aren’t in control of the game.
But if we had all players the same then the Premier League would be boring. You still need players like Ozil, because those are the sort of players that fans play money to come and see.
The media barely mention him at all if he has a quiet game when things are going well for Arsenal. But the moment he gets an assist people start bringing up all these stats about how many assists he gets.
Ozil’s one of these players who is judged on stats, not as an overall footballer. That’s the problem with today’s game.
Everybody’s looking at stats and not actually looking at the footballer and what else he brings. We want to judge him by how many yards he runs, but we’re not looking at whether those yards are creative in any way, and I don’t mean creative as in making opportunities, scoring goals. I mean are they actually helping the team in what they do.
Robbie Savage when he played would run all day long, but you have to ask yourself the question, was it worth him doing those yards? Could he have cut down by a third if he had used his brain.
The problem is, if Ozil gets a couple of assists or goals in the next few games then we’ll be saying how great he is. We’re going through that stage now where we’re judging players on one poor performance.
Arsenal could have done with an on-form Ozil against Manchester City, but at the end of the day there were another nine outfield players there as well, who maybe have not done their bit to give him the opportunities and give him the ball in good areas.
Look at Eric Cantona. He wasn’t great in every game, but we worked damn hard – all us ones who ran around like chickens with no heads, working hard – to try and get the ball to our playmaker, our cherry on the top. Eric won us a lot of games when Manchester United didn’t play well, but we got him in areas where his quality could come through.
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Eric Cantona
Image credit: Reuters
Some of those Arsenal players – the likes of Theo Walcott, Aaron Ramsey, Francis Coquelin, Granit Xhaka – they’ve got to do a little bit more to try and get him the space to do the things that he can do. Against City, they didn’t do enough to give him the opportunity.
City had a plan to stop Ozil playing, but it was easier done when the other players didn’t do enough to fight for him. Football’s still a team game, it’s not about the one individual.
The problem with Theo
We don’t judge Theo Walcott like we do Ozil. When he performs it’s maybe one in four games, one in five. And even then, how many touches of the ball does he have? And when he does get a touch, does he do anything positive with it? We’re don’t criticise his poor performances as much because he doesn’t normally give Arsenal anything like what Ozil gives them.
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Arsenal's Theo Walcott celebrates scoring their first goal
Image credit: Reuters
If you judge his performances, any goals he scores paper over the cracks for Walcott. The same could maybe be said about the performances of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and maybe Alex Iwobi too.
Walcott scores his goal and then what else does he do? Is he one of those players who scores and then goes “well I’ve done my bit, it’s up to the rest of them”?
To play as often as he does given the level of his performances… he’s got away with murder.
The way he plays sometimes, he plays like it doesn’t bother him. He’s very strange, he doesn’t show enough when he loses the ball and he shows no desire. Nothing seems to bother him, even when he’s letting his team down.
Arsenal can't challenge for the title
I’ve never thought that Arsenal could win the league. Can they qualify for the Champions League? Yes. But they can’t win the league. That performance against City showed why they can’t.
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Arsene Wenger at the Etihad Stadium
Image credit: Eurosport
I don’t think they can win the league for a while. Will they play decent football to watch? Yes. But can they build a better team capable of adapting their style to win different types of games while Arsene Wenger’s still there? No.
I don’t like saying that, because I respect what Wenger has done for English football. He brought a different ethos, he inspired other managers and coaches to change their approach. But now the game has moved and he can’t move that far.
But can Arsenal get the players to come to them who will be good enough to make the difference? Probably not while Arsene Wenger’s there.
Once again we are in this crazy situation with Ozil and Alexis Sanchez’s contracts. This has been going on for over ten years. It shouldn’t be like it. Arsenal are one of the big teams in the country and this shouldn’t happen.
Every year contract stories seem to come out, but it shouldn’t be like this. The Sanchez deal should have been sorted out, the announcement would have been a big coup for the club, and the fans would go “wow, Sanchez is staying” and suddenly the club can start attracting other players.
The big players aren’t going to come to a club who stall over deals like Arsenal do.
Arsene Wenger’s come out and said it shouldn’t be about money, and he’s right. But if you do what you do and then you see somebody not as good getting paid more then you’ll kick up a fuss. It’s called an ego. It’s called belief. It’s called arrogance. And those little qualities are the ones you get in a lot of the very top players. You sometimes have to give them what they are looking for.
As it stands, Arsenal can’t compete to win the league. They talk about it a lot. But they can’t compete.
We used to talk about the curse of November. Now it’s December. Maybe in five years’ time if we take it month by month then it’ll be May and they’ll actually have a chance at the title.
You don’t know what you’ll get with City
I was very impressed with City. The only problem is you don’t know what you’re going to get next time with them.
That’s as good as they’ve played – defensively, with the ball, it was brilliant what they did in the second half.
I’ve never seen Arsenal out-footballed as much. The only time maybe would be in the Champions League, but no English club has out-footballed Arsenal like City did in the second 45 minutes.
Oscar’s taken the easy way out
I think it’s disappointing when somebody of Oscar’s quality takes the easy way out (by moving to the Chinese Super League from Chelsea). He could go and play for a top four club in any of the best leagues in the world and do himself justice, but he’s taken the easy road.
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Oscar
Image credit: AFP
Is he really going to enjoy it in China?
I’ve tried to watch it – it’s terrible. There’s no atmosphere, the places are soulless, the football is poor and the big names are playing with local players who wouldn’t even be League One level.
If he was past it, beyond his best and couldn’t get a regular game then I could see it, but not somebody like that.
People say about the money, but it’s also about having a really good life. I don’t think he will have a good time living in China. It’s a backward step in football terms.
The most wonderful time of the year
As a player I loved the Christmas period… as long as we were winning.
If you win the first game it’s great, you can go into your second game with loads of momentum. But if you lose that first game then that second one becomes a panic, everything negative comes up because the fans are so involved.
It’s not a fun time for losing clubs, managers come under pressure and losing games in that short period of time makes more impact in people’s heads than over a month.
Birmingham have been seduced by a name
Why have Birmingham sacked Gary Rowett for Gianfranco Zola? Is it because Zola knows the Championship, or is it because he’s a big name, got an agent and all of a sudden he’s an attractive option.
There can’t have been much research into whether Zola actually knows the Championship and how to coach players at that level. They’ve just gone with the big name and it happens too often with foreign owners.
Follow Paul Parker on Twitter - @realpaulparker2
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