I’m a bit worried about how off his passing and control was. One thing he’s always provided is masterful handling of possession and a great first touch.
He was a little bit right of central (positionally) but that doesn’t impact the poverty of those turnovers from him. Hope he does the business on the training ground to get his pass execution back in nick.
I think Ozil just is not enjoying football and everything that comes with it right now. One big game could snap him out of it though so I hope we keep playing him.
Personally think it could to be a long year for Ozil, the amount of defensive work Emery had him doing will take a fair bit away from his attacking play. Wouldn’t shock me if Ozil wants out after 1 year of Emery, but I’m not sure if any other club will take on the high wages that he’s on.
Tbf I think if you check the raw numbers it’s not much different to the amount he’s ran all the time.
Nobody really noticed before and it’s what made those ‘lazy’ criticisms by his detractors all the more infuriating, because they were just based on falsehoods.
He has always ran a lot, he was just doing a lot of it in the defensive 3rd vs City, maybe it was just because we were playing city though and things will be different vs lesser opposition.
Let’s not forget Emery is very much in the process of assessing these players and he will continue to do that in the coming few months. Part of that is to ask different things of players to see how they cope with it, if that improves the team’s balance, whether that improves the player’s own effectiveness etc etc. Trying Ramsey as a second striker or Mesut having to do more defensively is all part of that. The hope is that once he has learnt enough about his players, he will identify his best team and know who to ship out (Xhaka hopefully) and what players he needs to bring in during the transfer window.