David Oudot
With Arsenal spending the transfer window chasing after strikers across Europe (Higuain and Suarez definitely, newspaper rumours of Jovetic, Falcao, Cavani and anyone else who plays up front on their own) it was clear to the world and his dog that Wenger knew his squad was limited up front. As was proved in the last three games of last season, when Giroud was suspended for them it became obvious that there was nobody else in the squad who could play there.
If I told any Gooner at the start of the window that by 3rd September our centre forwards would be Giroud, unknown injury-prone Sanogo (soon to be called Yaya’s a No-Go?), and the Artist Formerly Known as Bendtner, they would phone The Samaritans and soundtrack the Arsenal season with Anthony & The Johnsons singing “Hope There’s Someone”. But if I told them that Arsenal would be spending £42.5m on the player who got the most assists in La Primera Liga last season then their ears would prick up in excitement. Whilst the Arsenal squad is clearly short of a forward and Wenger is walking a tightrope, the signing of Özil could improve the first XI an awful lot.
In his three years at Real Madrid, Özil went from being a promising youngster, to a true quality (world class?) player. Signed for the seemingly cheap €14m from Werder Bremen the young German became the centre of the creative side of Real’s team over his three seasons there. An attacking team of Di Maria, Ronaldo, Benzema and Mesut are tasty on paper and whilst Ronaldo has a Messi-esque free-role, the fulcrum of Real’s goals was Özil. Although a lot of money was spent on Modric last summer, the Croatian was kept out of the team by Özil who had 26 assists over the course of the season and developed incredibly useful habits like taking free kicks and using both feet (although he clearly favours his left foot).
In the way Arsenal play he will be incredibly beneficial to us. We saw last season that Cazorla was a great finisher, so with him, Giroud and Walcott feeding off of the amount of chances created for them by Mesut then this could solve our problems. My biggest complaint from the last two seasons has been the amount of times we go in 0-0 at half-time without a single chance being created in the first 45, so to start creating chances early on is promising to say the least. If we can develop a habit of being 3-0 up by half-time we’ll be almost Invincibles-esque…
It seems like I’m not the only one who’s excited to see him play. The stats from Dream Team’s fantasy football game show that over 200,000 people have transferred him into their side before he has even played a game. I know I’m one of them! Sunderland are having an up-and-down season so far and could be there for the taking and it’s safe to say that Özil will be starting, hopefully for Wenger to make a statement to the rest of the League. He will be at the centre of everything when the team attacks and if Arsenal score it’s likely to be scored or assisted by him.
When the sale of Özil to Arsenal went through, Cristiano Ronaldo said: "He was the player who best knew my moves in front of goal... I'm angry about Özil leaving". If the best centre forward in the world is miffed at losing this player then we should be excited about him arriving at our place.
Twitter@davidoudot, www.davidoudot.com
