As I sat down in my seat in preparation for the Arsenal game, things were rather different to my usual surroundings. Normally I’m next to my dad on one side and two cousins on the other, with a view of the match almost exactly like that of the view you will have when you watch MOTD (my seats are twenty rows above where the matches are filmed). However, yesterday I was sitting next to a bed with some poorly folded shirts and ties on it on one side, and on the other an excessively-sized Ancient Greek dictionary.
I should explain. I am at a boarding school in Hampshire, England. I do not go home on Saturdays so I miss quite a few of those games in term time (I can go on Sundays). Therefore, I was in my bedsit at school desperately trying to find a live stream of the game which didn’t require me to try to win an I-Pad. Eventually I gave up and went to the realms of the Arsenal website.
As an Arsenal member one gets many perks and one of them is an account on the Arsenal website which allows you to access “Arsenal player”. This has radio commentary of the match and so I settled down to listen to it with baited breath.
One thing I should mention is that, just like so many other features on the website, the commentary was very bland and inoffensive. There was no real opinion and they were just telling the listener exactly what was going on. Therefore, if the Arsenal website gurus are reading this, please sort this out. With the money you have you can easily bring in some decent commentators (I’ll gladly do it). Perhaps Rich Goddard and I could have a “Good Cop, Bad Cop” thing going on?
I persevered and was delighted that I did. One thing which was really quite funny to listen to was the number of times the commentators said “Ozil” (sorry there’s no Ozil watch this week). He might as well have been the only player on the pitch at times according to the commentators. Having now watched re-runs of the match on TV; which really isn’t the same as going to the match itself, I appreciate why this is.
When Ozil signed for Arsenal everyone was saying that he’d be the man to transform Arsenal. That is an understatement. Every single Arsenal player has benefited from everything he does. He was involved in nearly every play. Every little pass and touch contributed to something. Mesut really is like Bergkamp. In the days of watching players make superfluous touches for the camera, it is great to have another player display much more skill than those show-offs with some end product to show for it as well. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that he scored two goals yet. Okay, just did.
One thing I’ve noticed every time I’ve watched Ozil play, be it for Werder Bremen, Madrid, Germany or Arsenal, it’s that when he scores he makes it look so easy. His second goal was testament to that. Although the finish only needed one touch and Ramsey’s sensational ball meant that Ozil pretty much had an open goal, Ozil slid the ball in with such efficiency one wonders whether he’d already taken the shot before it had reached him; if that makes any sense. Then there was the header. In general headers aren’t as stylish goals as the other goals you saw Saturday, but Ozil showed yet another side to his game. As if there weren’t enough already, we found out that he has formidable pace.
There were other footballers playing in that match though, one of whom was Aaron Ramsey. I don’t know how, but he may just have been better than Mesut Ozil.
When Ramsey first started playing for Arsenal I remember thinking that he had Fabregas-esque time on the ball and vision. Last season he had the best tackling statistics of anyone in the Premier League. This season he is scoring for fun. He is also blending those three traits into one of the best midfielders a team could want. Some of the touches he made were too good for my vocabulary to be able to even start doing justice to. That roulette turn and backheel in the dying seconds will genuinely stay with me forever. His goal proved that the Welshman is simply too good for some defences at the moment (it was very nice of the Norwich defenders to take a seat after he went past them). It still needs to be seen whether Ramsey can keep going and whether he can stay strong through the bad times; although to be fair to him he’s done a rather good job of that so far, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that Ramsey has the potential to be one of the best midfielders in the world.
Plus there was the small matter of THAT goal. I should warn you that once you sit down to watch a replay of the goal you have to watch it at least a hundred times before you are able to move on. The fact that Cazorla was the man who made it happen suggests that his partnership with Ozil could be bordering on unfair. Everything about that goal was perfect. Every touch was a thing of beauty. No other team could dream of doing something like that – it was just pure Arsenal: the passing, the movement, the artistic finish; everything about it was just beautiful. I’m sorry to be a bit saucy, but I now see why MOTD is a primetime show.
Every single player played brilliantly yesterday. If Arsenal continue to put in performances like that and the ones against Napoli and Tottenham and put in fewer performances like the one against Aston Villa, they will be close to unstoppable this season. I put the Tottenham one in because it means that when they start losing their flair they will still be able to shut up shop and get the three points regardless.
Let’s just hope that they can do the same to Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday.
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