Ozil was brilliant but so was the whole Arsenal team

Mesut Ozil again had a hand in both Arsenal’s games against Man City last night, and the scorer of the first (brilliant!) goal, Theo Walcott, was happy to praise the whole team for their efforts, but made it clear that he loves playing alongside the German midfielder. “It’s amazing. He’s very modest.” walcott said. “The thing about Mesut is that he sees things that most players don’t even see on the pitch. He knows what he’s going to do before he does it, you just have to make that run.

“We’ve got special players on the pitch who provide special moments in the match, and that makes our jobs so much easier. It’s a team game but you need these players in your team if you want to continue to play as well as we are at the moment. The amount he gives to this team, the threat going forward and also defensively, he puts a shift in and people don’t see that side of the game which has changed in the whole squad. Everyone’s working hard and I completely cramped at the end when I was chasing Yaya, but it just shows the amount of hard work that everyone’s put in this week. It’s difficult when you don’t play for eight days, to be able to get yourself up for it. The guys are going to be totally knackered tonight and they probably won’t get any sleep either.”

Ozil himself is happy to say that he couldn’t play so well without his team-mates as well. ” I’m happy to help the team. You see on the pitch that my team-mates help me to play my game. I just help them in return so today was another important game for us. I tried to give my best and we won the game, so we take the three points and that’s the most important thing.”

All the Arsenal players were hoping that Petr Cech was going to break the Premier League record for clean sheets in this momentous game, but the big goalkeeper was beaten by an unbelievable goal from Yaya Toure. He was just happy for the team to have earned the three points. “I think it was a six-pointer.” Cech said. “Leicester won their game and their game away and we needed to close the gap again. Manchester City were one point behind us so it was a very important game. You could see we were ready and we put in a good performance. In the second half we pushed harder and the last 15 minutes we were more tired and we put in a magnificent effort. They scored a goal out of nowhere and I have to say it gave them confidence and motivation for the last minutes so they pushed hard for the equaliser but I thought we were brilliant and this is why we managed to see the game out.”

Cech was also asked about Ozil, and he also was at pains to credit the whole team for the win. “Mesut is a world champion. A player with experience from international games and as well from his time at Real Madrid so obviously he is a key player for us. He has been playing brilliantly this season so have the other players. Today was a brilliant team effort and everyone in the team put in the shift we needed to win a big game like that and obviously we are happy with the overall performance.”

As Wenger said, the team spirit is tremendous right now and every single player is fighting for each other. If our backup players can win a game like this, how awesome will we be when Wenger has his whole squad to choose from?