Leicester City’s fairy-tale season helped us all witness a miracle – a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Ask any Arsenal fan and they would probably agree that watching the Foxes lift the title was better than witnessing their own team win the Premier League.
Now, I am not saying that any Arsenal fan would not want the Gunners to win the title (maybe a certain celebrity named Piers), it is just that the North London outfit might conquer England in the next 10 or 20 years (considering they haven’t done it in the last 12 years), while it is hard to fathom how Leicester would be able to do it, in the next decade or even in the next 50 years.
Claudio Ranieri’s side waltzed to the Premier League title, securing it with a huge margin of 10 points at the end of the season. But, they were able to do so because Arsene Wenger’s title-challenging side lost the plot midway through the season.
At the turn of the year, Arsenal were two points clear of Leicester City and were sitting comfortably at the top of the English Premier League table.
However, a disastrous second-half of the season saw them fall so far behind the Foxes that they were out of the reckoning for the title by mid-April and there was a growing concern in the fan base that for the first time under Wenger the team was going to finish below arch-rivals Tottenham Hotspur.
And if not for the mammoth bottling job by the White Hart Lane outfit, Arsenal would have finished below them in third place in the table. As was beautifully described by the famous Arsenal fansite Arseblog:
“Especially when all we’ve heard this season is how brilliant they are, how they’re the future, how they’ve had a season to be proud of and everything else. We’ve had a dismal campaign in comparison, we’ve been written off, dismissed as this, that and the other, and for all that, they have a chance to finish above us for the first time in 20 years and they bottle it like Bottler McBottle, heir to the McBottle Bottling dynasty who have been bottling things since before anyone can remember.”
However, among all this doom and gloom and introspection into the reason for Arsenal’s failure, there was one man who stood out and if not for the profligacy of the players in front of him, could have helped the Gunners bring the title to the Emirates for the very first time.
It is the lanky German, who with his wizardry left not only the Emirates crowd, but also the naysayers dumbfounded. Mesut Ozil, who is often criticised for his callous on-field demeanour, had a record-breaking campaign and the playmaker could have easily shattered Arsenal legend Thierry Henry’s Premier League record of 20 assists in a league campaign with some support from the strikers in the second half of the season.
In the 45 games that Ozil played for the Gunners across all competitions, the German scored 8 goals while assisting a further 20. In the league alone he assisted 19 goals, falling short of Henry’s Premier League record by one goal. The German playmaker, however, created a record-breaking 146 chances for the Emirates outfit in the league, more than what any other player has managed to achieve in the English top flight since the beginning of records.
The 27-year-old had racked up an incredible 13 assists in his first 15 league outings for the Gunners and was tipped by one and all to destroy the existing record of most assists per season. He had, in fact, racked up 16 assists before the turn of the year and had Arsenal managed to replicate their form of the first-half of the season in 2016, there is no doubt that the assist-machine would have etched his name in the record books once and for all.
The German, who prefers to assist his teammates instead of himself going for glory, was let down by the very players in the latter part of the season as in many games he ended up without an assist despite creating a host of chances for his side.
The German impressed one and all with his fleet footedness, his anticipation of the game, his excellent distribution and a penchant to play outrageous, but pinpoint, through balls to the player making the run in the box.
While Olivier Giroud benefits due to the accuracy of Ozil’s set-piece delivery, he is not the ideal candidate to make optimum use of the German’s wizardry. Where the former Real Madrid man is head and shoulders above any other footballer is his ability to spot the runs of players and to find it with scrupulous accuracy.
A pacy striker, who likes to sit on the shoulder of the last defender, is the ideal candidate to have in a team which has Mesut Ozil as the chief creative force. The Gunners would have benefitted greatly if they had a similar striker in their ranks, making full use of slide rule passes that the German provides.
One could argue that in Theo Walcott, Arsenal had the striker to make use of Ozil’s vision considering the blistering pace that the Englishman possesses, but the 27-year-old has been a shadow of the player he once was and that is evident from his dismal return of nine goals and seven assists in 42 appearances.
With the German’s future at the Emirates uncertain as he has stalled contract talks with the Gunners to focus on Euro 2016, it is absolutely mandatory on the part of Arsenal to ensure that the 27-year-old is not allowed to leave in the summer.
Further to that, the Gunners also need to rope in players to take full advantage of the specific skill sets of the World Cup winning playmaker. Especially, a fast and agile striker, who can benefit immensely from getting on the end of some delicious through balls from the German.
With the right support, Ozil can help Arsenal end their 12-year-long wait for their Premier League title. For now, let him assist the Germans in conquering Euro 2016, which will kick-off on 10 June in France.
