Defender trusts in magic of Mesut

MESUT OZIL is a man who can turn a match and even a season on its head.

Unfortunately, the arrival of Southampton at the Emirates tomorrow will be a poorly-timed reminder of the moment in December that Ozil did both – for the wrong reasons.

The Gunners had gone 22 games unbeaten since losing to Chelsea and Manchester City in boss Unai Emery’s first two games in England.

Ozil had missed a number of recent games through illness and niggling injury and was on the bench at St Mary’s. With the game poised at 2-2 and Arsenal on the front foot, Emery brought him on to conjure that special something that decides such games.

Sure enough, an over-elaborate backheel conceded possession and allowed Charlie Austin to snatch the points with a breakaway goal.

Since then, the Gunners have lost six more matches out of 14, while Ozil has started only the home games against Burnley, Cardiff and BATE Borisov on Thursday.

He is only trusted to play against teams likely to sit back and defend.

And his return in a face-saving 3-0 win against Belarus minnows BATE in the Europa League, which set up a last-16 tie with Rennes, was heralded a triumph by his team-mates.

“He played very good,” said defender Sokratis.

“Mesut is a fantastic player and when he is fit he is one of the most important players of the team.

“Of course when something is not going good, everybody is there to criticise, but we have to see also what Mesut did in the last few years for this team.

“All the team, all the players are behind him and we need a good Mesut to go forward because we know what he can do.

Need

“He enjoys himself and we enjoy that he is with us. Mesut is very important, he is a very good guy and we need him.”

Team-mate Alex Iwobi added: “He’s world class. I know that if I make a run he has the vision to find me.

“Hopefully he can keep on playing. We know what Mesut’s like because we see him in training every day. We scored three goals as a result of him playing.”

Actually, the former Germany playmaker had no part in any of the goals and an analysis of Ozil’s contribution on Thursday explains why Emery is set to drop him again.

“We are going to play a lot of matches and maybe sometimes we need him to start and sometimes on the bench, because we have a lot of players to also help us,” said the Spaniard.