The Arsenal injury curse strikes again and what we were initially told was a fairly minor ankle problem ended up needing an operation to fix it, and now we have the usual setback to his recovery and the upshot of it all is that our Spanish midfield maestro Santi Cazorla will not be adding, during the current season at least, to the eight Premier League appearances he made before being subbed off during the Champions League hammering of Ludogorets Razgrad.
There has already been a lot of debate about how much the Spaniard brings to the table for Arsenal and how much his absence has hurt the team and their efforts to claim a major trophy like the EPL title but another question connected with that is how much losing Cazorla affects the other main creative star in our side, Mesut Ozil.
And in depth report by Sky Sports suggests that it is quite a lot, even though Ozil’s form has dropped off dramatically in recent weeks. You could say that he was struggling before this to hit the heights that we saw from the German in the early stages of the season when he had Santi feeding him balls.
Ozil cannot do all the creative stuff on his own and there is no doubt that Cazorla possesses a technical ability and eye for a pass that the likes of Xhaka, Elneny and Ramsey just do not match. The fact Ozil’s goals have dried up tells you a story about how his team mate was helping him, as does the fact that Arsenal failed to score against Middlesborough in the first game without him after winning the previous six.
Can we put some of the blame for Ozil’s struggles on the absence of Cazorla?
Bob.