Midfielders who score goals are often the key to a title winning team. During the 13-14 season it was a certain Yaya Toure leading the charts with 20 goals, next season it was Eden Hazard with 14 goals and most recently it was the PFA player of the year Riyad Mahrez with 17 goals.
It shows that it is not only the strikers who should be banging them, it’s customary for the midfielders to chip in with the goals too. So being an Arsenal fan and watching the same Mr. Ozil who standing in the 6-yard box and yet look sideways instead of just shooting, it certainly feels exhilarating to watch him make runs past the defender’s line or shoot from a tight angle and yet find the back of the net.
The player who used to thread inch-perfect lofted and through passes to Alexis is now more often on the receiving end of those and is finishing them off in such a clinical manner that you are left to wonder where was this before.
The pleasure he used to get from watching one of his created chances being converted is now being replaced by his desire to make runs and the joy obtained from converting chances himself.
Mesut Ozil the assist king is now adding goal scoring to his ever extending repertoire. As the man himself says:
I am the sort of a player that likes to create goals.I think a lot of my team-mates know me as a player who is not selfish.
In the absence of Oliver Giroud this season there is a certain fluidity to the front four of Walcott, Ozil, Iwobi or Chambo and Sanchez from which Ozil is benefiting the most.
His shift from a deep-lying creator to an advanced No.10 is clearly paying dividends. Watching him drafting behind the defense looking for a ball from Sanchez or Walcott instead of him finding Walcott and Bellerin or playing one-twos with Cazorla is certainly quite a different thing to watch.
Last season his target was Thiery Henrys all time high Premier League assist record of 19 assists of which he fell short by 1, yet it was his greatest ever assist total till date even better than his Real Madrid days where he was considered arguably the best No 10 in the world and had also scored 8 goals in the entire campaign.
This season he already has 10 goals to his name in all competitions, which is his career best and were not even into 2017 yet. The difference in him this season is that he is finally learning how to be selfish in front of goal instead of being the selfless person he is naturally.
Such is his characteristic evolution that he is drawing comparisons to Arsenal Icon and Legend Dennis Bergkamp. He is now also exerting the same sort of dynamic influence that Bergkamp did and this is according to one of Bergkamp’s teammates Robert Pires who trains with the squad on most days.
He believes that in his time the maestro was Bergkamp and now it is Ozil who can score goals along with his assisting capabilities with the same ease like the Dutch man did. There are certainly a lot of similarities between the two of them, both play very good football and both play for the team.
Wenger sees the similarities and is urging his current master of technique to do what it takes to earn the kind of status Bergkamp enjoyed at Arsenal. He said:
He can be a legend if he commits.
Dennis Bergkamp committed for a long period, he played until he was 38. I wish we have 10 more years of Özil. To become a legend at the club you need to stay for a long time. If you stay two years you would not be a legend.
Being able to and having the will and motivation to score at will with a killer left foot can only be an incredible thing for the club which aspires to win the league after 12 years and for Wenger who is yet to sign a contract extension with Arsenal, something he will only do once he sees how this season pans out and if he believes that he is still the best man for the job and hasn’t lost his touch which gave Arsenal a Golden Premier League crown.
