Arsenal Vs Olympiakos: 5 Things We Learned

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3. Mesut Ozil Is Not Alone

I touched on this in my five reasons why Ozil needs Ramsey, but we saw a fantastic example of it against Olympiakos. As touched on in the previous slide, Mesut Ozil, while incredibly effective yet again, was not dominating the game. He chipped in the two pre-assist passes for the first two goals. Statistically though, be contributed just one key pass and one shot on target. Couple that with the aforementioned 79% completion. If you looked at those stats alone with no context, you’d say Arsenal probably had a rough game.

And yet it was the complete opposite. Ozil was still quietly effective but he let Olivier Giroud take front and center. While Ozil had been carrying the team, he quickly learned that he did not need to do this any longer. That is something Alexis Sanchez still has yet to learn.

With Aaron Ramsey, Giroud and even Joel Campbell pulling the weight that they did, the pressure was lifted off of Ozil. Going forward, he will be able to utilize this added space to find even more effectiveness. The German is only going to get better thanks to this shifting of the spotlight.

Now, on to the surprise of the offense.

Next: 2. Joel Campbell Is Starting XI Quality