Arsenal Vs Everton: Taking the pressure off Mesut Ozil

Arsenal scored five goals against Everton on Saturday evening. Mesut Ozil wasn’t directly involved in any of them. Taking the creative pressure off the German will make all the difference for the versatility and potency of this team.

Arsenal scored five goals against Everton. In all honesty, they could have scored a whole lot more. While it was far from a perfect performance from the Gunners, with some vulnerabilities exposed in defence and a lessening of the attacking pace and intensity in the second half, there was certainly much to be pleased with, no less than the creativity of the midfield.

Catch the latest episode of the Pain in the Arsenal podcast here

Arsene Wenger has always prided his teams on possessing highly creative and ingenious midfields. He likes to control games through extended periods of possession, keeping the ball with quick, interchangeable passes in deeper areas, before pouncing on a positional error or over-commitment to a particular area of the pitch from a defender with a series of sharp, quick one-touch passes.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 standout players from 1-0 victory over Everton
• 3 positives & negatives from Goodison Park victory
• Arsenal vs PSV preview: Prediction, team news & lineups
• 3 talking points from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• Mikel Arteta provides Gabriel Martinelli injury update after Everton win

Mesut Ozil is the master of this. Head on a swivel, eyes bulging, straining to see every grain of grass before him, the elegant German gracefully floats across the pitch, belying an air of nicety and decorum, before viciously sparking a cutting attack with a piercing, penetrating pass and move. Because of such mastery, he has, for a long time, been the centre of this Arsenal iteration.

But in the 5-2 win over Everton on Saturday evening, that same pressure to create was not thrust onto his often shallow, slouching shoulders. Perhaps what was most impressive about Arsenal’s performance was not just the goals that they scored, but that they scored them without Ozil registering a goal or an assist. In the Premier League this season, they have scored five goals on two prior occasions. In those games, Ozil recorded two goals and three assists — he had a direct hand in half of the goals scored.

Not this time. And this is not to say that Ozil was below par. He still had a major involvement in all of the first three goals — he turned a direct, precise pass into Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s feet for the first; it was his corner that Shkodran Mustafi flicked for the second; it was his brilliant touch and drive, combining well with Alex Iwobi, that led to Aaron Ramsey’s deflected second.

But Ozil was no longer relied upon to provide that cutting moment of quality that only the very best of attackers can. In fact, it was Henrikh Mkhitaryan who stole the creative limelight, recording three excellent assists throughout the 90 minutes, and finding and exploiting those pockets of space that Everton so freely vacated in between the defence and the midfield.

The addition of Mkhitaryan, alongside the greater goal threat and movement of Aubameyang, opens up this Arsenal attack to a truly exhilarating level. No longer is Ozil solely tasked with bringing the spark to the table. No longer is Alexis Sanchez the lone individual capable of the extraordinary. There is versatility, pace, skill, and depth.

Next: Arsenal Vs Everton: 5 things we learned

Being able to take the creative pressure off Ozil will only help him. It is not as if he played poorly in his fixture. He was quietly excellent — he still created the most chances in this game, including an inch-perfect through pass for Aubameyang to race onto midway through the first half, which was perhaps a little glimpse of what is to come. But he is now free to flutter, and that is very exciting indeed.