Arsenal: Mesut Ozil preseason trip has significance

Mesut Ozil will join up with the Arsenal squad on their preseason trip to Singapore next week. With Unai Emery still formulating his plans, his presence does carry some significance.

Arsenal have been conducting preseason activities since the start of July. Unai Emery has been putting his new squad through their paces, looking to decipher many of the selection dilemmas that he has for the season ahead, and begin to instill some of the tactical and technical elements that come with his change in system and strategy.

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However, with the World Cup also ongoing at the same time, some of the players that would usually partake in the summer preparations were absent. David Ospina with Colombia, Danny Welbeck with England, Mohamed Elneny with Egypt. That does add a layer of complication that would not usually be present during a normal preseason.

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Thankfully, though, some of those players are beginning to return to the squad, the most prominent of which is Mesut Ozil, who will travel to Singapore and join up with his teammates in far East Asia.

It may seem like a fairly benign piece of news. All that is happening is a person is turning up to work. That’s it. But for Ozil, who endured a horribly difficult World Cup in which he was dropped from the German side and was roundly blamed for the defending champion’s nightmare time in Russia, and for Emery, his presence does carry some significance.

First and foremost, it is a return to normality. The World Cup is special. It only happens once every four years. It is not normal to play in an international competition in the summer while preparations for the domestic season are undertaken. Ozil might well be happy to simply get back to what he has done for the last five years.

But more than that, this will be the first time that Emery and Ozil have worked together. Their careers have not overlapped prior to this point and, other than what their mutual connections may have said of the other, they have no experience of working with one another. Striking a positive relationship quickly is important, and this is a chance for the two to invest in one another.

Moreover, Ozil is an extremely divisive figure. Some in the game are utterly enamoured with his qualities and are quite happy to overlook his high-profile warts; others are less merciful and heavily scrutinise his game for lacking commitment, courage, diligence, and industry.

No one really knows what Emery thinks about Ozil. In fact, it is quite possible that Emery doesn’t know what Emery thinks about Ozil. This trip to Singapore, the training sessions that will be undertaken over there, the preseason matches against Atletico Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain, will all help Emery form his opinion on Ozil and how he can be used — and protected — this season.

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So yes, the news may literally be that a man is turning up to work. But there is a greater nuance and effect to it than just the bare fact. Ozil and Emery need time to work together, and the more of it they get, the better. This is the start of that all-important process of acclimitisation.