Arsenal: Mesut Ozil and Granit Xhaka on trial

Unai Emery is seeing what players can adapt to his new style at Arsenal. Two players who are struggling are Mesut Ozil and Granit Xhaka. Over the next few months, both are on trial.

On Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, pundits Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville debated the role of Unai Emery at Arsenal, whether he should be adapting his style to the players that he has at the club, and how he should go about his business, both in the short and long term.

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Their debate was more about Emery and his role in north London, rather than a commentary on any of the specific players at the club, but within their somewhat heated but altogether riveting discussion, which you can see here, Neville brought up the example of Mesut Ozil to help illustrate his point of Emery not needing to adapt his principles to his players:

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"“Let’s take Mesut Ozil. You’re [Carragher] right, he can’t press from the front. So he’s [Emery] got to give Mesut Ozil opportunity to basically give him enough rope to see what he’s going to do with it. The reality of it is, he said to Mesut Ozil, in the lead up to the second game, you’ve got to work harder. The first time I’ve heard someone publicly call Mesut Ozil out, after one game. Second game, he hooks him and subs him. He’s working him out. He’s basically saying ‘I’m giving you a chance. If you don’t want to press, if you don’t want to do what I’m telling you, you’ll be out the team.’ He’s working out those players.”"

It is spot on from Neville. In slightly simpler terms, Neville is saying that Ozil is on trial, Emery is giving him a certain amount of time to prove that he can adapt to the new style of the team.

https://twitter.com/SkySportsMNF/status/1031613160397201408

Like, for instance, Sergio Aguero at Manchester City and Pep Guardiola. Guardiola demanded that Aguero pressed from the front. At first, Aguero didn’t. He was dropped. But then, he adapted, he changed, he moulded himself into Guardiola’s style and now he is the starting striker once more. That is precisely what Emery is doing with Ozil.

Another player who is also on trial is Granit Xhaka. The Swiss international has been substituted early in both matches thus far. On both occasions, Lucas Torreira was on in his place and 19-year-old Matteo Guendouzi remained on the pitch for the full 90 minutes. Emery is throwing Xhaka, and Ozil, into the deep end and seeing whether he can sink or swim.

At the moment, the results are not promising. Neither Xhaka nor Ozil have had a good start to the season. Both were extremely poor against Man. City a week ago. Both might well have been worse on Saturday. That does not mean that they have failed Emery’s test. Two weeks is simply too small a sample size to effectively evaluate their performance. But the early signs are not good.

Ozil and Xhaka, as Neville rightly states, must adapt to the style that Emery is implementing. If they don’t, then they could very quickly find themselves on the chopping block. They are on trial, and, at the moment, it’s looking as though they’re guilty.