Arsenal: Mesut Ozil player of the season exclusion speaks volumes

Arsenal fans voted and the verdict is not in the favor of Mesut Ozil, who is now hoping for third place in the player of the season rankings.

Arsenal fans were handed a tremendous responsibility – as always. They were asked to vote for the best player of the season. They chose Aaron Ramsey. It was an astute decision and I’m proud to say that they got it right.

His 15 goal contributions in the Premier League were second only to Alexandre Lacazette, who accumulated 18. However, Ramsey did play about 400 less minutes. The Welshman never reached 2000 minutes this year, yet his contributions were consistent and massive, much like his breakout 2013/14 season when Super Rambo was born.

The results for the player who finished second have also just been revealed and… it’s not Mesut Ozil. Nacho Monreal, who had a burst of goals and a steady run of consistency, but in the end, had the same problems he’s always had, which amount to age and declining athleticism.

I’m not one to speculate, or read into situations all too much, but looking at this from a big picture perspective, the exclusion of Mesut Ozil from the top two speaks volumes. But it’s not necessarily volumes in a bad way.

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For instance, in a year of such severe disappointment, it makes for a positive spin that someone like Ozil, who actually had a lot of superb moments and some remarkable consistency at times, doesn’t even crack the top two in the fans’ collective eyes.

That said, it’s impossible to ignore the negative implications as well. Ozil is making £300,000, the highest-paid Arsenal player ever, he’s had a ton of questions asked about him over his time here at the club and this season was a microcosm of it. Numerous, inexplicable injuries sprung up and cost him valuable time in the trenches with the club that he now committed himself to.

In the end, he managed just four goals and a decent eight assists. Which, again, is decent, but not what you would expect out of someone of Ozil’s caliber, let alone his pay grade.

Given how the season ended up, as in where Ozil ended up after disappearing, this may also be an indictment of that, but more or less, what this means in the long run is that Ozil needs to do a hell of a lot more than what he is doing.

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He is the kind of guy that should be, without question, in the running for player of the season and it just wasn’t there, according to the fans. And the fans are pretty important.

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