Arsenal: Mesut Ozil turning into Unai Emery’s spare key

It takes a lot to commit to a two striker set for Unai Emery, but apparently he sees Mesut Ozil as his spare key to unlocking the best Arsenal attack.

Against Manchester United, it was a bit surprising to see Mesut Ozil given a rare start for Arsenal behind a two striker set. The strategy from Unai Emery was pretty clear – match United position by position. And it worked, with Ozil being a big part of why it worked.

Emery didn’t change anything against Rennes, other than subbing in Shkdoran Mustafi for a suspended Sokratis. Ozil kept his place as the sole creative midfielder, backed by Granit Xhaka and Aaron Ramsey, two creative minds in their own right.

Arsenal’s strength was supposed to be in their ability to create goal scoring opportunities, and that’s why Unai Emery has been able to exercise a lot of options with how many creative-minded players he has, but in the past, confining the club to a 3-5-1-2 has limited their creative potential because, according to the rules of the formation, you can only put in one creative midfielder.

That one man has been Mesut Ozil for two straight matches and for two straight matches, he has been up to the task, floating in open space, using the width created by the wingbacks to find the channels with which to unlock his strikers.

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It’s en enviable position, having space while having Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette in front of you, but it also carries with it tremendous responsibility. If the strikers are choked out of chances, odds are, it’s because that No. 10 isn’t working.

When this club was struggling to find their best attacking form, it was because of a lack of chances, so had you said then that the way to get the best out of this attack would be to dial back on the creative minds and let Ozil handle it all, I’d have kicked you in the shins.

But lo and behold, Ozil has had a point to prove, and he has been utilizing this new role as well as we could have wanted. Now, granted, a lot of help comes from those around him, but he still has a lot of space to occupy and make the most out of and he has been doing all of that.

He’s created six chances in his last two matches in that role. That is the kind of production we’ve been dying to see out of him. So maybe he was the spare key to unlocking this attack after all.