Why Mesut Ozil has a one-dimensional role in Unai Emery’s Arsenal next season

It was a significant moment in the 77th minute of the 2019 Europa League final. With Arsenal down 1-4 and needing to save face, Emery chose to bring off Mesut Ozil and bring on his 19-year old replacement Joe Willock.

It was even more telling when Willock nearly scored after a great run and created more chances for the team than Ozil had for the entirety of his duration on the pitch.

With major surgery required on the Arsenal squad to get ready for next season, many fans are calling for Mesut Ozil to be sold. His massive wages and relatively low contribution all season makes him a perfect scapegoat to be put all the blame on.

While it may feel like Ozil did not contribute a lot in terms of goals and assists, we have to realise that Emery’s constant changes in tactics and formations may have left a lot of his players confused about his instructions, Ozil included.

At one point during a Premier League match, Alex Iwobi had to come on and then embarrassingly ask his teammates on which formation they were employing during the game now.

Emery has employed a 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1, 4-4-2, 3-4-3, 3-4-2-1, 3-5-2, and even a 5-3-2 depending on the nature of the match and the opposition. He is inherently an evolving manager, who reacts to the opposition rather than takes control of the match. A number of Arsenal matches this season had poor first halves for Arsenal, but after a few substitutions and a change in the formation Arsenal turned it around in the second half.

As a result of this constant tinkering, Ozil has been asked to play as a number 10, as an inverted right wing playmaker, a shadow striker, and even a central midfielder on a few occasions. All these positional changes did not help Ozil on the pitch as he was often forced to alter his game.

In the first half of the season, Emery often demanded more of Ozil in terms of his off the ball pressing and positioning. Such an increased attention on defending may have forced Ozil to alter his game and it definitely affected his forward passing.

All throughout his reign at Sevilla and then PSG, Emery often preferred a 4-3-3 with a fluid and energetic midfield three capable of high-energy pressing and all round attacking play. At Arsenal, he seemed to have found it with a trio of Torreira, Xhaka and Ramsey.

Ozil was often sacrificed as a result of the preference of Emery to field this midfield trio. Often during the first half of the season, Ozil was bought on only as a substitute to make the team more attack-minded.

Another important aspect of Emery’s philosophy has been his extreme reliance on full-backs and their crosses into the box. Much of Emery’s tactics at his first season at Arsenal involved creating a 2 v 1 in the wide areas and the full-backs subsequently crossing in for the strikers to score.

This is evident from the fact that Hector Bellerin had 5 assists in just the first half of the season before his cruel injury. Even Kolasinac had 9 assists to his name by the end of the season. In comparison, Ozil had only 2 assists. Even Mkhitaryan and Iwobi had lesser assists than Kolasinac, which showed the importance of full-backs at Emery’s Arsenal.

Due to this importance of full-backs, much of the tactical play was structured around providing the ball to the full-backs in the wide areas and then crossing it into the box for Lacazette and Aubameyang.

It is a well-placed belief that this tactical instruction slightly hindered the creativity of Ozil and the other playmakers in the squad, as they were often instructed in creating these overloads and passing to the full-backs, rather than searching for the final killer ball themselves.

Anyone who has followed Ozil during his time at Real Madrid and Werder Bremen has known that Ozil has never been one to take games by the scruff of the neck. In Real Madrid, he was surrounded by real leaders in Sergio Ramos, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo. Ozil was only tasked with providing a killer ball, Ronaldo was tasked with scoring and finishing the game off.

So, it is a bit of a reach when Arsenal fans expect Ozil to take control of a game and become a real team leader. He has never done that at Real Madrid and will not do it at Arsenal. He is just a playmaker, who can provide that final ball for the strikers to score or help maintain control during the build-up phase of the attacking plan.

Unless Emery unshackles his rigid tactical setup and allows Ozil to freely express himself, it is a fear that the only Ozil we will see from now on is one who drops deep to receive the ball, helps to maintain possession with his lateral passing, and passes to the full-backs when the overloads are created.

While it is true that Ozil has looked far from his usual self this season, perhaps the constant shuffles from Emery has played a part in his reduced performance.