The Wizard of Özil

[Angelito]

#FootballingReasons

[starmandb]

I said it when the decision was announced, while he's playing 3-4-3 I can back the decision but I even said, the moment he tries to play a formation based on having a CAM then he's going to shoot himself in the foot.

............. and here we are.

I mean, he's playing Willock, don't get me wrong he looks good against Farmers in the Europa but I said he's not ready for tougher Prem games.

Arteta said he'd take responsibility if things go wrong, well, we're here.

Arteta should of kept to the Atletico model, he even bought their best CM ffs, his indecision due to feeling the pressure is making him regress.

Molde. 12million pound farmers?

[jayramfootball]

#FootballingReasons

#whatisbestfortheclub

[aniym]

So you couldn't find this from 28th Oct?

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... n-22921582

Never mind the numerous videos on Arsenal official instagram with him in training, one literally 3 days ago, before the Leeds game. Glad you've deduced a whole load of shit though.

My mistake then, I didn't check Instagram.

[Santi]

So you couldn't find this from 28th Oct?

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... n-22921582

Never mind the numerous videos on Arsenal official instagram with him in training, one literally 3 days ago, before the Leeds game. Glad you've deduced a whole load of shit though.

My mistake then, I didn't check Instagram.

Fair enough, just surprised you’d jumped to a lot of conclusions as well. Apologies for being a bit OTT

[theHotHead]

btw I have no doubt some of the players are questioning his call to leave Ozil out of all squads. I think he's on thin ice with them and potentially on the verge of losing them like Unai did.

Ozil is popular inside and outside of the squad, top players wont like seeing it and our forwards especially will get fed up knowing he's there on his couch when they're feeding on scraps.

There is no difference between him not being on the team sheet (March - August 2020) and him not being registered; he is out of sight and out of mind when it comes to the rest of the team. He had a pretty barren run under Arteta even when he did play.

I'm sure he is on good terms with all the players, but who's really pushing for him to be in the squad? He's not even in training anymore, and he hasn't played professionally since March; you can't reintroduce him and expect fireworks, when his lack of output dates back to 2018.

There's a reason his name is primarily associated with "chances created" these days, the most bullshit, subjective stat there is. If Pepe is leading that table, it's pretty meaningless.

Wait, you are saying creating chances is a bullshit stat ?!! Remind me how many goals we have scored this season, remind me how many chances we have created this season. Are you saying there is no link between the number of goals scored and the number of chances created ?

Think very carefully about your answer ....

[theHotHead]

Also this bs that he isn’t training, where did that come from Aniym?

He's not training with the senior team is what I meant. But looking into it, I can't find any evidence that he's doing any kind of regular training at all. I don't mean joining the team to train while on holiday, which Henry, Pires and others often did after leaving. I mean training with the regularity needed to gain match fitness. This is the last tweet I found regarding this.

Last weekend, Sokratis was in the starting XI w/ the U23s v Everton. He clearly expects to continue playing in a senior role, either in Jan or in the summer. Nothing from Ozil. He isn't in the U23 squad as far as I can tell. As such, I'd assume he's not training with them either.

Ozil's good friend Merts heads up the academy. Steve Bould is the coach and wouldn't have any reason to exclude Ozil. Even then, we only hear about Ozil on Twitter. That tells me the guy won't kick a ball for us again under any circumstances.

So you couldn't find this from 28th Oct?

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... n-22921582

Never mind the numerous videos on Arsenal official instagram with him in training, one literally 3 days ago, before the Leeds game. Glad you've deduced a whole load of shit though.

Facts will always trump stupidity and laziness.

[EliteKiller]

Wait, you are saying creating chances is a bullshit stat ?!! Remind me how many goals we have scored this season, remind me how many chances we have created this season. Are you saying there is no link between the number of goals scored and the number of chances created ?

Think very carefully about your answer ....

Off course the more chances you create the better chance you have of scoring but chances alone means nothing.

It doesn't win you anything .... look at last season then look at final EPL positions

Man City 108 big chances created versus Liverpool's 88 - but Liverpool walked away with the title

Spurs 48 big chances created 6th place, Brighton 48 big chances created 15th place

Crystal Palace least big chances created with 33 finished 14th, whilst Watford who created 45 still got relegated

Creating chances is one thing but scoring them is what counts -

This season Spurs shots per game 12.8 - goals 21
Arsenal shots per game 9.1 - goals 9

If you don't convert your chances you will end up mid-table or worse ... just ask Watford.

[VCC]

Dont know why anyone talks up or wants to recall a player that made himself unavailable for away games, he is only then available for half a season.

[theHotHead]

Wait, you are saying creating chances is a bullshit stat ?!! Remind me how many goals we have scored this season, remind me how many chances we have created this season. Are you saying there is no link between the number of goals scored and the number of chances created ?

Think very carefully about your answer ....

Off course the more chances you create the better chance you have of scoring but chances alone means nothing.

It doesn't win you anything .... look at last season then look at final EPL positions

Man City 108 big chances created versus Liverpool's 88 - but Liverpool walked away with the title

Spurs 48 big chances created 6th place, Brighton 48 big chances created 15th place

Crystal Palace least big chances created with 33 finished 14th, whilst Watford who created 45 still got relegated

Creating chances is one thing but scoring them is what counts -

This season Spurs shots per game 12.8 - goals 21
Arsenal shots per game 9.1 - goals 9

If you don't convert your chances you will end up mid-table or worse ... just ask Watford.

EK at least you admitted the very clear and obvious connection between creating chances and scoring goals.

To address your main point about putting the chances away, your Spurs comparisons make another point - the quality of the strikers plays a big part. Spurs' strikers are miles better than Brighton's strikers.

What you are doing is inferring that it is LESS important to create the chances and MORE important to score them. No its not, the 2 are linked and will always be. Create more chances you score more goals, providing you have decent strikers. The 2 are as important as each other

How many times do we see promoted teams creating chances but their strikers are not that good and so squander far too many of them?!!

[EliteKiller]

EK at least you admitted the very clear and obvious connection between creating chances and scoring goals.

To address your main point about putting the chances away, your Spurs comparisons make another point - the quality of the strikers plays a big part. Spurs' strikers are miles better than Brighton's strikers.

What you are doing is inferring that it is LESS important to create the chances and MORE important to score them. No its not, the 2 are linked and will always be. Create more chances you score more goals, providing you have decent strikers. The 2 are as important as each other

How many times do we see promoted teams creating chances but their strikers are not that good and so squander far too many of them?!!

You clearly didn't read the comment in full ....

Watford created more chances last season than 7 other EPL sides - but they got relegated creating more chances did not lead to more goals.

Simply creating chances means absolutely nothing without players putting them in the net ....

Take the game against Leeds, for all the chances they created, if Saka had scored from our one decent chance late on we would have won ...

xG is a useful metric over time but in individual games it means very little ...

Take the game Spurs v Man City the xG was 0.69 v 2.10 ... that tells you that Man City had a three times greater chance of scoring than Spurs ... but was that actually true?

If you look at the data behind the xG from that game ...

Spurs only had five xG events the two goals both of which were .20 (ie likely to be scored just 1 in 5) and three more chances .17 .08 .04 so statistically unlikely to score more than one goal, yet they got two and could easily have had three.

City had 19 xG events the best was a 0.5 (scored 1 in 2) that was the late save from Lloris, all the other 18 were less than 1 in 7 chances

So even though City had by far the higher xG they only had one "good chance" whereas Spurs had three "half chances"

Over the season creating a lot of small chances, Liverpool had by far the most last season, will lead to goals ... but that's not the only way to win Spurs beat City by creating just three half chances and scoring two of them ... Leicester won a title by scoring from a ridiculously high percentage of their chances ... there's not just one way to win games.

Right now we are creating very few chances but what's far worse is even when we create a good chance we fail to score ... that will come right quality strikers don't suddenly stop scoring ... but it needs to happen soon, the NLD game would be a good start.

[theHotHead]

EK, lets simplify this, I see your point, but in the main, lets agree that the following is true:

If you create more chances you will score more goals.
If you have better strikers you will score more goals from the chances that are created.

Agreed ? Generally speaking of course. theese are not "catch-all" statements, but one can reasonably believe them to generally be true.

[jayramfootball]

Ozil says hi.

[gamechannel]

Ozil says hi.

I bet he and his Mrs are gonna get it on extra hot tonight..

[jayramfootball]

Ozil says hi.

I bet he and his Mrs are gonna get it on extra hot tonight..

He'll be too busy laughing at Billy Big Bollocks Arteta.