Arsenal: Is Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang another Mesut Ozil?

Arsenal struggled against West Ham, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang wasn’t of much help. Which makes me start to wonder – is he another Mesut Ozil?

If you’re putting the pieces together in logical form, you may be starting to think that I’m going to say something outlandish, but stay that thought, my dear Arsenal friends, because I’m not. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is a fantastic goal scorer with tremendous abilities and it shows when he has a stinker and is still in prime contention to win the golden boot.

But there is a fact we have started to accept during his time here at the Emirates. This fact being that, ask him to do much else besides score goals, and he isn’t of much use. By that standard, you could call him a luxury player – someone who does well when the team does but, when tasked with turning around a bad time, can’t.

Mesut Ozil is a luxury player. He passes the ball incredibly well but doesn’t do much else. He doesn’t track back, he doesn’t maintain possession all that well, he doesn’t score goals. He just passes quite well.

But even that passing, after his initial burst into the Premier League, has faded as the team around him has struggled. Ozil hasn’t had the ability to turn things around for himself, or for the team.

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Aubameyang isn’t all that different, is he? In his individuality, few do what he does better, but when contributing to a unit, he needs so much else happening around him in order to be effective, which we saw again against West Ham.

Aubameyang really only had one chance to score, and he skied it. He is known to be a finisher who needs a lot of chances, but it really hits home when he isn’t given many chances and, in turn, he disappears. It isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last.

But the question we must ask is – is it worth it?

I would hope that everyone answered that yes, it is worth it. Because while he is indeed a luxury player like Ozil, he plays a much more luxury-friendly position at striker, conveniently alongside Lacazette, who isn’t a luxury striker.

Ozil doesn’t have that kind of support system, and he plays a position that the club can no longer afford to give to a luxury player because they aren’t good enough around him.

The two are so similar in some ways, and so different in others. On paper, two of the best; on the pitch, you never know.