Arsenal: What makes Denis Suarez different than Mesut Ozil?

Arsenal went out and brought in Denis Suarez at Unai Emery’s behest, but what makes the Spaniard different than Mesut Ozil?

Mesut Ozil has been running circles around the media lately, which means I’m having to spend more than my usual amount of time focusing on his situation at Arsenal. It’s a sticky situation, and one that, the sooner we can just cut it off and be done with it, the better.

Unai Emery’s solution to Ozil being inadequate was to bring in Denis Suarez, the 25-year-old Spaniard from Barcelona that Emery had prior experience working with at Sevilla. He’s a creator, a dribbler, and a thinker of a midfielder, who Emery also intends to use as a winger, but after seeing Suarez putter about for just under and hour’s worth of gameplay, my question is one that I really don’t want to ask – what separates him from Ozil?

Now, obviously there are things. Age. Nationality. Yada yada. But I mean, when you get down to play style and production, what actually separates them?

Ozil does one thing well – he creates chances. He isn’t the worst dribbler either. He lacks pace, he lacks fight, he lacks defensive work rate.

So here comes Denis Suarez to be the solution and guess what? He creates chances, he isn’t the worst dribbler, he lacks pace, lacks fight and lacks defensive work rate.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

Now, granted, Suarez has only played for 54 total minutes, and we’ve had Ozil for four years. But what I imagined being Emery’s “style” is a gung-ho, never quits midfielder that can press the opposition, win back the ball and drive counter-attacks along with the fancy-schmancy dribbling and flicking.

But Suarez isn’t much faster than Ozil, he doesn’t defend any better than Ozil, maybe he tracks back a bit more, but to no great effect.

That doesn’t mean I’m not excited to see what he can do, because I absolutely am. I’m just curious why, if Suarez is what we were so drastically missing, why Ozil wasn’t just given the faith of Emery to deliver on what Suarez is here to try to deliver on, seeing as how their production is so similar.

Maybe it’s all about the wages. Maybe Emery is determined to drive Ozil out of the club to free up wages and thus sees Suarez as the perfect bridge between Ozil being here and his unavoidable exit. But whatever the case, this is the boat we are in, so let’s see Suarez do something with it.