Arsenal vs Atletico Madrid: Mesut Ozil is not an option

Arsenal face a tough task to beat Atletico Madrid, even at the Emirates, and as such, Mesut Ozil is not an optional cast member. He must play.

Arsenal’s upcoming match against Atletico Madrid is rather massive. Without a conclusive win, they will be up against it when they rematch in the Spanish capital for the second leg. They will need all hands on deck, therefore, to build a substantial lead.

Unfortunately, as it stands, there aren’t that many available hands on the deck at all.

For starters, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, the dynamic January duo, are both unavailable, the former because of a stupid rule that is changing next year and the latter because of the ligament injury he suffered against CSKA Moscow.

Already against the eight ball. We will have Alexandre Lacazette, which is great. But as we saw against West Ham, he needs a little help getting started sometimes and, fun fact, Alex Iwobi is not the guy to kick start the Frenchman.

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And as great as Aaron Ramsey is, he isn’t a lock picker. He’s a battering ram, and that usually requires some facilitating too. He’s a go-getter and a self-starter, but we are talking big picture here. By big picture, I mean lots of goals, and most coming in this leg, just to help us sleep better at night.

Mesut Ozil is the key. He is the key to unlock Lacazette, to whittle away at Atletico Madrid’s stingy defense and to make up for the missing pieces, namely the dynamic Dortmund duo that has done so much to diversify a struggling attack.

Only we don’t know if Ozil will be healthy or not, as he is still suffering from the flu that kept him out against West Ham and exposed the potential creative problem that we have in that regard.

I would love to dance around and say that someone else can take the burden and shoulder the load. Only I actually don’t think they can. We need someone of Ozil’s caliber pulling the strings in the attack because, without him, I could see this attack going rather stale, and a potential lack of goals coming back to haunt the Gunners when they travel to Spain next week.

Next: 5 Things Learned Against West Ham

That said, if the question is would you rather a half-fit Ozil or someone else, I’m not sure of the answer. The ideal answer is “neither” so let’s hope we don’t need a different one. What I do know is that there is no ‘optional’ here. Ozil has to get healthy.

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