Arsenal vs Napoli: Not the time to keep messing with Mesut Ozil

Unai Emery isn’t giving up on Mesut Ozil’s Arsenal career, and that’s the right thing to do, but Napoli is not the time to keep messing around.

To all the people that slated Unai Emery for “mistreating” Mesut Ozil by keeping him out of the Arsenal team, I want a complete reevaluation. Emery has gone out of his way to give Ozil chances in this, the most crucial part of the season, and lo and behold, Emery was right in the first place, when he was under fire.

Simply put, Ozil has not been good in away matches, which is why Emery never uses him. Of course, he’s been different in home matches, where there is more comfort, but we always knew that about him, didn’t we?

That said, despite this knowledge, Emery has stuck with Ozil over the past week. Against Everton, Ozil got the start, and a lot of good that did. The entire team looked like they were stuck in mud and Ozil was helpless to dig them out of it.

Some may not want to fault Ozil, and that’s fine, truth be told the whole team sucked. But when you’re making almost twice as much as the next highest player, more is expected of you.

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Still, Emery stuck with him, granting him another opportunity in an away match, this time against Watford. Being a man up, Emery took a liberty and sent Ozil on for Lucas Torreira at half, a move that still has me scratching my head, though apparently it had to do with a small injury.

He wasn’t great, Ozil. He did create two chances, but overall, this was another one of those matches that he just didn’t belong in. It was too high-octane, too frantic, too out of control for him to get a foothold in and, true to form, he failed to establish himself, or prove himself in any way. Not like he does in home matches.

Thus, the experimentation was inconclusive, and Unai Emery needs to press onward with trying to figure out what value Ozil has in the future of this club. This, however, does not mean that we need to test him against Napoli. In fact, let me specifically say please do not test him against Napoli.

Not unless we bag two away goals and take a 2-0 lead into half. This isn’t the kind of match to be trifled with and I just don’t have the confidence in Ozil to do the dirty work that this match will require. There are better choices to be made.