It is Tuesday so it is time for the weekly Arsenal bashing guff that is produced by the hack Adrian Durham and once again his target is Mesut Ozil, and the manager, team and club in general of course, with a side dish of dismissal and disrespect to us Gooners that are stupid enough to actually support our great club.
Durham is never one to let the truth or the facts get in the way of a story but I am going to give his opinion on our German international midfielder some credence and answer the points he tries to make in a Daily Mail report.
His main criticism of our number 11 is that he failed to do enough in the big game against Chelsea and win the game for Arsenal. It is true that Ozil did not provide an assist and he did miss that chance in the final minutes, but he was involved in all our attacking play and was the player in the box closest to converting. Players miss, it happens and at the end of a long and tiring game it is even more understandable.
Actually, Adrian me old pal, the stats show that Ozil was the best midfielder on the pitch for either side. He created more chances than Fabregas, Hazard, Oscar, Cazorla, Giroud, Alexis and all. His passing accuracy of over 92 percent was bettered only by Coquelin among all the midfielders on show and obviously Ozil´s were more adventurous. All three of the chances created led to a shot and so with better finishing he would have got an assist.
It is easy to point out the great record of assists by Fabregas but they all came when Chelsea were totally dominating and Costa was scoring for fun. I could have got a few assists in that side. The fact is that the game against Chelsea on Sunday was tough and any player would have struggled to break their defence down.
Ozil has been excellent since returning from the injury he picked up in our last game against Chelsea but obviously we don´t want to dwell on that do we Adrian? Let´s accuse him of being the new Juan Sebastian Veron instead eh? That should win us Gooners up a treat and that seems to be his intent every week. Maybe him and Michael Owen should form a club…