Arsenal: Mesut Ozil – double the striker, double the fun

Mesut Ozil is a freakishly good creator, so it stands to reason that the more people he can feed, the better. Arsenal can provide that.

Arsenal had a bit of a problem at the start of the Stoke City match. The problem was that they didn’t have their usual cast of players and they had literally no inspiration to build off of. What resulted was an incredibly drab affair for about an hour, maybe more.

Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang looked to combine several times, but to no avail, despite several good runs and near misses.

Things changed when Alexandre Lacazette came on. There was a much more potent attack, with a ton more of an attacking threat and just an all-around improvement.

Related Story: 5 Things Learned Against Stoke City

Everyone looked livelier. The attack was spread out better thanks to the speed that Aubameyang provided out wide and the link-up and creativity up front from Lacazette helped kick things into gear as well.

But Mesut Ozil came back to life as well. The first hour of the match, he really didn’t find a lot of joy. He looked frustrated, foiled and incapable of doing much of anything constructive.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 observations from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• 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

Not surprisingly, when more options came onto the pitch, that all changed. I have been critical of Aubameyang playing on the wing because I don’t entirely understand why you’d do that and not just play two strikers. But when Ozil started to utilize the two of them in their respective roles, I started to understand it better.

Ozil is like a protractor. He measures his angles so incredibly well, and if you give him more angles to play with, he can be even more decisive. That’s what we saw the moment Lacazette stepped onto the pitch. Angles seemed to open up and Ozil started to find them.

It was another match where Ozil sort of faded into the background. That was helped on by the first hour of anonymity, but that’s not the point. The point is that Ozil did what he is so good at doing. He stepped up when needed and rose to the occasion.

The German maestro finished the match with six key passes and was very unlucky not to have an assist added to his tally.  They will come though, if this becomes the new norm, this double striker set-up, even if they aren’t really double strikers.

Next: Arsenal vs Stoke City Player Ratings

Call it one of the first voyages into this new, amazing potential. This attack has some more secrets to unlock with Ozil as the key master.