Arsenal: It’s nice when no one has anything to say about Mesut Ozil

Arsenal fans are used to the font of drama surrounding Mesut Ozil, but despite missing Fulham, that doesn’t exist right now, and it’s amazing.

Pain in the Arsenal contributor Daniel Finton brought up a great point in his article a couple days back, that the only source of negativity surrounding the club right now is coming from pundits who need something negative to say in order to make headlines.

But even those small drippings of annoying negativity can’t hide the fact that it is remarkably quiet around the Arsenal world these days, and I mean that in a good way. No one is complaining about Granit Xhaka. Shkodran Mustafi is doing well enough. No one is criticizing Hector Bellerin (except me).

And, most importantly, no one has anything to say about Mesut Ozil. This is what I find to be the most refreshing thing about this current international break. There has not been a word said about Ozil and I love it.

So much of the drama this year has stemmed from Ozil’s corner, and not always at any fault of his own. We all know what kind of player and person he is and some people just don’t like it. But in the past, his failures had greater impacts on the club.

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This year hasn’t been a failure for him, but he hasn’t hit any remarkable heights yet. But the club isn’t suffering. It’s flourishing. And as of yet, no one (that I’ve seen) has made the nefarious decision to say that the Gunners are being held back by Ozil.

Which is incredibly strange, seeing as how he was absent against Fulham, the best game the Gunners have had by some margin.

I wrote previously how Unai Emery’s simple clarification that Ozil was having back problems in practice seemed to completely nip in the bud any of the headlines you knew were coming, such as “Ozil’s mystery illness strikes for eighth time.”

There was and still is none of that. There is just a general aura of contentedness, and it’s making the international break remarkably… boring. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. If anything, this all makes me extra excited to see how Ozil can fit into an attack that just keeps getting better and better.

I still want to see twenty assists from him this season. Guess he better get started on that one pretty soon.