Mesut Ozil Arsenal
Thierry Henry has hailed the job that Mikel Arteta is doing at Arsenal so far but warned the Gunners boss to resolve the issue surrounding Mesut Ozil. The German midfielder has been omitted from Arsenal’s Premier League and Europa League squads and has not played for the club since March. Arteta has played down the situation, claiming the midfielder was left out for footballing reasons, but Gunners legend Henry believes the Arsenal first-team manager must sort out the situation for the club to move forward.
Thierry Henry said “First and foremost, you can see an identity, a togetherness,” Henry told CBS Sports podcast Que Golazo. When you’re going to be the boss after the big man, so obviously Unai Emery was but now it’s Arteta, it’s not easy to go after Arsene Wenger, it’s not easy at all. But what I see with Mikel is that the passion is back, the happiness is back, obviously he gave them a good solidity. Now he needs to deal with what he needs to deal with: the Ozil case and other cases. That doesn’t happen overnight. When you inherit a team from someone, you need to make sure you can clear some stuff, because it just doesn’t happen overnight. And then people are like ‘Oh, oh, oh, he didn’t give all those contracts to some of those players’. So he needs to make sure he needs to bring the players that he needs to adapt to his system. And that takes time. ‘And on top of everything, in this league it takes even more time because the competition is crazy. I don’t know when was the last time where, after six games, every team already lost a game. Every team already lost a game – I don’t remember that. It means what it means, it’s not easy for even the teams that are well prepared, well organised. Like I always say, the game is long. To build a team it doesn’t happen just like that overnight. I always use Klopp as an example. I remember when he first arrived, he couldn’t hold a lead. They would be 3-0 up, 3-3. They score, they concede four. Took him two-and-a-half to three years to have a completed team. Now everybody respects what he does – and rightly so by the way because he’s a hell of a manager – but then from them understanding what he wanted he went and bought pieces that were missing: Van Dijk, Alisson, Fabinho, and some others now. But at the beginning it took him two-and-a-half years or so for them to understand his philosophy, because it doesn’t happen overnight.”
