by EliteKiller » Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:58 am
It's not that Ozil is bad - he is/was clearly a class act - it's just since 2015 he's been so easy to play against. The opposition manager must look at our starting line and smile - Ozil - Auba - Laca - three players who whilst individually excellent can be shut out of the game just by blocking their access to the ball. If you now look at how even the weakest EPL teams play us it's exactly the same ...
Isolate the front three, this works because none of them are prepared to go looking for the ball - looking at yesterday, but it's the same every week, Ozil, Lacca, Auba between them manged just 91 passes just 7 into the Brighton box ... from 91 attempts a quarter 24 went astray, between them they managed a massive 5 tackles all lost (Ozil didn't make even one attempt at a tackle in 90 minutes) ... between them they won just 1 header, think about that all those long balls for just 1 header won, how easy is that for a defence? So that's arguably our best three players about as involved as a eunuch in an orgy.
Every opposing manger knows this, just isolate the front three and you can play 5 v 3 in the middle and overload our defence with runners, that works because we lack pace all across the back eight and everyone knows it ... simple plan that is now beating us week in week out.
Why pick on Ozil? well he's the 350k a week dynamic player who is supposed to be our creator, the player who should be seeing as much of the ball as possible .... compare his involvement to KDB, Eriksen, Rues, Silva, Dybala, Muller, Isco and he's not even close ... when six of our weaker players are seeing more off the ball than our supposed play-maker you just know things are not working.