Bard
The mood music around the club seems to suggest that we are getting rid of Sanchez and Ozil either in January or on a free next summer. If they go in January we will ignore Wenger’s boast a couple of months ago that they weren’t being sold under any circumstances plus a little homily about players running down their contracts. We will bypass the humungous financial own goal of letting two top players walk away for free and ignore the AGM comment that letting their contracts run down and losing £200m+ should somehow be interpreted as a statement of intent.
The point is these signings were meant to be the beginning of our move up a level. It was the reason we endured the ‘lean years’. Watching Ozil’s and Sanchez’s performance against Everton you can see what might have been. It hasn’t quite panned out that way.
The preferred arguments in favour of getting rid of them go something like this. Sanchez is selfish and a bit of a troublemaker. Ozil is lazy and doesn’t turn up for big games. These arguments have merit but the bigger picture is much more complex and ultimately depressing.
Sanchez is ferociously competitive, and he is clearly a handful off the field but he delivers the goods. Last season he scored 30+ goals. It is fair to say that most top players are difficult to manage - ask Ancelotti about his experience at Bayern. A top manager has to have the skills to manage difficult players and big egos. Sanchez’s body language tells all and has done for a good while. He doesn’t really think much of his teammates (incidentally I don’t either) and he makes that quite clear. We have offered him a monster contract but the truth is he doesn’t rate Arsenal or Wenger. In short he probably feels he was sold a pup by Wenger when he signed. He doesn’t want to stay around a club that isn’t going anywhere. You can call that arrogance or a measure of his self worth or a damning indictment of the club. Take your pick.
Ozil’s situation is more complex. We appeared to sign him on a Wenger whim following a home defeat. It wasn’t clear at the time whether we needed such a player or where he would fit in. It seemed one of those where he became available so we bought him. He is a mercurial player, he has a wand for a left foot and when he’s on his game he is wonderful to watch. But he can’t tackle and seems to drift out of big games too often. Many of us have seen players like him over the years and what you have to do is build a midfield and attack around them. Clough and Ferguson made this an art form. He needs robust defensive players around him to do the water carrying and make the tackles. He needs forwards with pace who can make the runs between defenders. But Wenger in his infinite wisdom hasn’t done that. On far too many occasions we have Walcott (another non tackler) and Ramsey (nil positional sense) partnering him with Giroud up front. This negates the point of having Ozil in the team. In this sort of formation his faults look a lot worse than they are. I suspect he gets this and is fed up with it.
Many fans might say good riddance to them but watching the mediocre team we put out at Watford I had other thoughts. They are probably the last world class players we are going to see in the Arsenal shirt in the near foreseeable future. With their exit, the vision that came with the move from the old stadium is dead in the water. We offered Sanchez nearly £300,000 a week and he still doesn’t want to stay. That tells you everything you need to know about how a top player views Arsenal and its manager these days. Hunker down for the arrival of more Denilsons and, Eboues.
