There is a lot of talk about the Germany international Mesut Ozil and the chances of him staying at Arsenal and even signing a bumper new contract with the club. And despite our play maker having come in for quite a bit of criticism during his time in north London, justified or otherwise, you will not find many Arsenal fans who are not desperate for him to sign and stay.
It will be a massive surprise and in my opinion a travesty if Ozil does not pick up the Arsenal Player of the Year award as he has been one of only a few consistent performers in the Gunners team this year and his contribution of goals and assists has been the most telling, while he also broke the Premier League record for consecutive assists and chances created over the season.
The German should also have broken the EPL assist record of Thierry Henry but finished just one shy after some woeful finishing from his team mates, so you might be wondering what the hell my title is all about. Well I looked at Squawka.com for his stats over his three seasons with Arsenal and they paint a different picture altogether.
Ozil’s 6 goals, 19 assists and 144 chances is more than the 4, 5 and 70 of last season and the 5, 9 and 76 of the previous one but he played a lot fewer minutes in those campaigns. In fact his 3036 EPL minutes this season is more than three times what he managed in his debut year and over 1000 more than last time and if you convert his stats to an average per 90 minutes his top stats are all from 2013/14.
His overall score over 90 minutes this year was 38.67 and that is not quite as good as the 40.39 from last year and much worse than the 70.21 of his first season, so does this actually show that Ozil is getting worse or having less of an impact as time goes on?
Well maybe not, especially if you consider how much better his stats would be this year if Arsenal had not been so bad for a few months after christmas. It is also worth remembering that Ozil’s influence on the team as creator in chief and the oil that makes our passing game work fluidly is not really shown in stats. And finally, the fact that the Squawka.com team ranking based on stats has Arsenal top on 11,542 and Leicester City only 9th with 6,460 tells you that stats can be deceiving.
But they are useful and so should we be a bit more cautious about Ozil and his impact for Arsenal?