Arsenal's Mesut Ozil problem: Arsene Wenger's preferential treatment of German has come at a cost to others

Exit ‘the Ox’, off to graze on pastures new. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s departure from the Emirates Stadium was a vote of no confidence in Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal. It was also, indirectly, a consequence of Mesut Ozil’s Arsenal.

Even Arsenal, after years of Wenger’s careful husbandry, could not afford to lose three of their premier players on free transfers next summer. Alexis Sanchez is their prized asset. Ozil was attracting no offers. So when one came in for Oxlade-Chamberlain, they gave Chelsea an answer in the affirmative.

But if Oxlade-Chamberlain’s move was both motivated by a wish to win more and a desire to play in his preferred position, then it is partly attributable to Ozil.

He can be a lightning rod for criticism and a convenient scapegoat, but it is worth recalling he was bought, and for a club record fee, to make Arsenal challengers. That entails winning difficult away games, which tend to have coincided with Ozil’s most ineffectual displays.

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He has been emblematic of an era; just not in the way Arsenal intended when they paid £42.4 million for him. It has been a time when too many of Arsenal’s talents have not realised their potential. Some have been denied opportunities by injury, others by Ozil. It is not the World Cup winner’s fault that Wenger has accumulated so many midfielders, many of them coveting an attacking, central remit, in squads that have often looked imbalanced.

Yet the preferential treatment he has been afforded has come at a cost to others. Oxlade-Chamberlain, the man who wanted the chance to burst forward from the centre of midfield and ended his Arsenal career as a wing-back, is a case in point. So, perhaps, is Alexandre Lacazette. Arsenal’s new record buy could have started at Anfield on Sunday even if Wenger wanted to accommodate Danny Welbeck and, understandably, chose to pick Sanchez. Instead, Ozil got the nod and performed in the manner many expected: wretchedly.

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Others have suffered more than Lacazette. Wenger has been seduced by Ozil’s talent and his capacity to create chances. Yet if the king of the assist was recruited to help others, he has actually stood in their way. Santi Cazorla was superb as a No. 10 in his first season in London. After Ozil’s arrival, he was shunted out to the wings before eventually, and successfully, being reinvented as a deep-lying midfielder. Tomas Rosicky, a seemingly frail figure who had a tendency to turn in important performances when it mattered, became ever more marginalised.

The two most affected, however, was supposed to spearhead Wenger’s generation of young local talent. There are a host of factors behind Jack Wilshere’s demise but, while injuries are a common denominator, rather fewer to explain why Aaron Ramsey has underachieved at club level in the past three years. Except that he has had spells on the right wing and stints on the bench while Ozil has been an automatic choice, just as Wilshere has been used on either flank and as a defensive midfielder. Neither has really been permitted to play in his best position.

There was a point in September 2014 when Ramsey and Wilshere were twinned as two attacking midfielders, with Ozil shifted out to the flanks. The two young Brits flourished. With Ramsey but without Wilshere, Arsenal then won at Manchester City in January 2015 with a tactically astute, defensively sound, counter-attacking 4-1-4-1 system. The plan was soon jettisoned: such was Wenger’s determination to field Ozil as a No. 10.

And Ramsey and Ozil have only really seemed compatible in the latter’s first few months at the club. The Welshman was one of the best attacking midfielders in Euro 2016, a man with two winners in FA Cup finals and, until he got injured, a seeming candidate for Footballer of the Year in 2013-14. It is tempting to ponder an alternative history where Arsenal were built around Ramsey, not Ozil. Instead, Arsenal’s most dynamic midfielder has stagnated. And so, though it is about far more than one player, have Arsenal.

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There are others, Olivier Giroud in particular, who have benefited from Ozil’s supply line. The German has teamed up productively with Sanchez at times although, given the Chilean’s brilliance, so would many another. He came close to a Premier League record when mustering 18 assists in the 2015-16 season. Despite Sunday’s thrashing at Anfield, it is still the case that only Henrikh Mkhitaryan has created more chances than Ozil this season.

But the numbers can feel deceptive. Facts can be used in Ozil’s defence, theories in the prosecution. They have to be, simply because it is impossible to say definitively what would have happened had Wenger taken another course. But Arsenal can look at a host of other gifted progressive players who have not fulfilled their promise in the last four years and wonder if and how it might have been different but for Wenger’s stubborn faith in Ozil.