Arsenal: Mesut Ozil and Unai Emery stand-off has no likely winner

The ongoing discussion of Mesut Ozil doesn’t look likely to resolve anytime soon, so in Unai Emery’s pursuit of success at Arsenal, how does he deal?

I’m not going to forget what it felt like to see Mesut Ozil ‘eeyoring’ off the pitch against Chelsea anytime soon. As Arsenal struggle to find their footing in the new year, they need all hands on deck to be positive and he was anything but.

All this does is compile on the ongoing narrative. We are two weeks into the season, and Unai Emery and Mesut Ozil are already having a passive clash, of sorts. The manager is demanding a higher work rate from his one-fifth captain and Ozil has been conditioned, throughout his entire career, not to give it.

It’s not that he can’t, it’s just that isn’t who he is. He is a cerebral player, not a physical one. He will not chase down the ball, he will dwell on it, and pick out the perfect pass. He is, as I often put it, a luxury player, and at nearly 30-years-old, that isn’t likely to change.

But something has to give. Literally. There is no way that Unai Emery gets what he wants and Ozil remains who he is. That’s not possible. They each want something completely different and they can’t coexist as they are.

One or the other will have to give in, will have to change what they want or who they are.

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

Either Emery readjusts what he wants out of Ozil, focuses on his strengths and figures out a way to build around that, or Ozil adds more workrate to his matchday performance, which no one else has ever gotten out of him.

But maybe they just never asked. Maybe Ozil has it to give, he has just never been forced into a position of needing to do so in the past. It wouldn’t be the craziest thing in the world, if this majestic creator has never been pushed to do more with himself, because he’s been so good at what he does do.

That won’t fly with Emery though, and we’re seeing that early on. He can’t just be who he is and expect to fit into this new system at the club. Which is tough, because he literally just signed a new deal, committing himself long-term to Arsenal Football Club.

The only other alternative, that hasn’t been discussed here, is you sell him. But that’s perhaps the diciest option, because the price would be nowhere near what we’d deem worth it and, in the end, he wouldn’t be exiting with the pomp and circumstance that we might have expected.

He would leave as a failed experiment. Which is why I hope that a middle ground can be found between him and Emery.