Arsene Wenger revealed his appreciation for Mesut Ozil while also hailing his contribution to the team this season, speaking ahead of Arsenals game against Crystal Palace.
The 23-year-old already has 9 goals in 23 appearances topping this season, with his previous highest Arsenal tally(8) for an entire season and it his this improvement in the final third with which the boss expects him to take his game to the next level.
This season the German has come in for criticism for his performances in the recent defeats to Everton and Manchester City, however, the boss believes he can influence more games by further improving the quality of finishing as he does in training sessions.
The German international featured in his 100th Premier League appearance in the Boxing Day victory against West Brom notching up his 36th assist in the Premier League with Eric Cantona being the only player to have raked in more assists in first 100 EPL games than him.
Here’s what Arsene had to say about Ozil:
“He is of course a huge player,
I always defended him here in press conferences, because I believe that he has improved his commitment. Physically he works much harder than people think he does.”
“He works hard, but I think he had one or two games this season especially where he was frustrated. The one that comes to my mind is the Man City game where he was criticised after, but overall if you look at the whole contribution in the whole season, for me he has been absolutely fantastic.
“I believe this season he has scored more goals and personally I believe as well he creates more chances for himself than ever before because he runs more behind.
“I still think there is a gap between his potential finishing and the way he finishes. In training he finishes much better than in the games and I am convinced that his percentage of finishing will go up in the coming months and he can have a huge contribution to the team, not only through his passing but as well through his finishing.”
The 28-year-old world cup winner has so far created 45 chances, completed 909 passes out of which 593 were going forward and has an 87% pass completion rate, highest in the team. Clearly, he cannot be blamed if his teammates fail to put away the chances he creates.
Better finishing or not he clearly is chipping in with the goals this season and is regularly creating chances too. As for the games against Everton and City, certainly, he cannot be faulted for not creating chances if the team fails to keep the ball at their feet.
With the poor ball possession, Arsenal had in that City game and their failure to win back the ball it would certainly be an injustice to blame him for the team’s poor performance.
He is a sort of player who clearly shines when the team has most of the ball possession and that clearly need to be the gameplan for big games too.
