Leaving Ozil as a passenger shows Emery is driving Gunners in the right direction

WHAT Unai Emery is doing with his treatment of Mesut Ozil is old-school management. And I like it.

By leaving him out against Bournemouth, Emery (with Ozil, below) is saying to the whole dressing room, ‘By taking on one of the big characters that you see day-in, day-out, and respect, I’m letting you know who is boss.’

What you want in a football club is the boss to be the boss.

You want to have a lot of respect for your manager and, dare I say, a little bit of fear.

I don’t think there has ever been a manager who has won trophies consistently that the players haven’t had a little bit of fear of.

There are several ways you can do that in a dressing room. You can come in and tear into everybody, which is a bad political move because everybody responds to different things.

Or you come in and say, ‘I’m going to identify one or two players who, if I have a stand-off with them or if I put my arm around them and get the best out of them, it will trickle through to the rest of the squad’.

A classic example might be Pep Guardiola. He had the situation with Sergio Aguero. When Pep first went in to Manchester City we thought, after the first few months, Aguero was going to go.

It was almost as if he was saying to the rest of the dressing room, ‘I don’t care if he is the top man here, Gabriel Jesus is my preference to play up front.’

Now, Aguero played so well that he had to stick with him and Pep had to do a bit of a U-turn.

Sir Alex Ferguson did it notoriously with a number of players. Challenging the big hitters, players such as David Beckham, Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole and Roy Keane.

Now it is Emery’s turn. He has looked at Ozil (above) and thought, ‘Can we get more out of him?’ The answer is yes.

But by saying to the rest of the dressing room, ‘This is arguably the biggest name at the club, a World Cup winner, someone from Real Madrid, by leaving him out, none of you are safe’.

And if none of them are safe, they all have to scrap for their jobs. And if they all have to scrap for their jobs, then Arsenal Football Club are going to benefit.

Of course, we shouldn’t forget they have two north London derbies coming up, Manchester United, and then Liverpool just after Christmas.

So it is not too much of a stretch to think he will be playing Ozil in most, if not all, of those games.

It could be part ‘let’s leave him out, give him a break and freshen him up for those big games’.

Part letting the dressing room know nobody’s place is safe.

From next year, Arsenal are going to be expected to compete. No excuses.

Emery is finding out who he can rely on and there is nobody bigger to test that with than Ozil.

He wants him to visibly stand up to be counted when Arsenal need him in the biggest of games.

That is a very, very fair request for the manager to make.

All world-class players that have been asked questions usually step up to the plate. Will Mesut Ozil? It remains to be seen.