Mesut Ozil Out At Least Three Months With Knee Injury

Well, this is shocking. International break has never been friendly for Arsenal players. Take for instance last year when Jack Wilshere went down. This year it’s Mesut Ozil, who the German FA just confirmed will be out for 10-12 weeks with a partial rupture of the outer band of the left knee joint.

This puts Arsenal at eight injuries, just one behind Manchester United’s nine.

Ozil may not have been in the best form, but that’s mostly Arsene Wenger’s fault for slotting him out wide. When he was in the middle, he was dynamic and Arsenal are going to feel this loss.

With Ramsey and Arteta already out, this leaves our once prolific midfield incredibly vulnerable (much like our defense).

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I feel like Wenger’s best course of action would be to slide Santi Cazorla into the middle of the pitch, where Ozil should have been, and keep Alexis and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain out wide (like he should have done against Chelsea). That’s still a dynamic attacking force and hopefully it will hold us over until Ramsey’s return.

Another thing this may do is force Wenger’s hand to sign a fill-in in January. We saw it happen in August when Olivier Giroud was out, we rushed to sign Danny Welbeck. Now that Ozil is out, we may push the envelope for a Marco Reus or Julian Draxler type.

I don’t think this injury will be as detrimental as it appears to be. Wilshere and Cazorla still give us plenty of creativity at midfield without the potential irrelevance that Ozil can sometimes provide.

However, we wish Ozil a full and speedy recovery, and look forward to seeing him back on the pitch in 2015.

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