Arsenal: Biggest strength becoming massive weakness

Arsenal had a pretty clear plan in mind when they paired Henrikh Mkhitaryan with Mesut Ozil but this “power couple” is quickly becoming a weakness.

When you look at the assist numbers in the top five European Leagues over the last five years, you’ll find that Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan are two of the best. They have been assisting for years and that’s why Arsenal thought it would be such a good idea to bring the two together.

It would be like a double-barreled shotgun, with one guy on each side capable of shredding the defense with any number of skills.

And sometimes, that has been the case. Man, when they’re working, it is a beautiful thing. They can slice and dice and make things look easy. When they weren’t both on par, then generally speaking, one would be able to cover for the other more times than not.

But gradually, this “power couple” is starting to fail. Or continue fail, if you’re really pessimistic. Suiting them both up on the wings, or one on the wings and one at No. 10, has proven to be an all-or-nothing ordeal.

Either they are power players, controlling the game and creating countless chances as they rip apart defenses or they are liabilities.

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This season, they have both been pretty awful throughout. That is, aside from Mkhitaryan’s half hour or so or divine inspiration against Chelsea, where he turned the tides of the battle by his power alone.

But all that did, for me anyway, is remind me how woeful these two have been over the course of three matches. Mkhitaryan leads the team in chances created (7) but that’s a bit misleading, as the bulk of those came in a very short time-span against Chelsea, though he does deserve tremendous credit for that span.

Still, this was supposed to be arguably the biggest strength of the club. This dynamic duo of creativity and ingenuity was supposed to provide all the chances for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and thus far, they have failed woefully.

Which is troubling, because the team saw fit to back them up without any proper wingers, so we are confined to the narrow attack of the Ozil-Mkhitaryan duo for the foreseeable future.

Hopefully they will turn this around. But against West Ham, Mkhitaryan surrendered the ball five times, created zero chances, and Mesut Ozil had another mystery illness. Hardly the types of results you’d want from your big guns.