When Mikel Arteta took charge of Arsenal, the first question everyone kept asking is whether Mesut Ozil will be sold off during the January transfer window.
While we still don’t know what the future holds, but in his first game in charge, the new manager chose to name the playmaker in his starting XI against Bournemouth away from home.
And by the end of the match, Mesut Ozil was one of the standout players for the Gunners at Dean Court.
He ended the match with the highest number of passes made during the match by an Arsenal player and the new boss was full praise of him.
“To be fair his attitude in training since the day that I walked in the building has been incredible,” Mikel Arteta told the club’s official website.
“I’ve seen this. I’ve said that I was going to give a clean slate to everybody and it was fair to give it to him. When we did the game preparation and were watching the opponents, where we could hurt them, we believed that he could be a key point.
“We prepared the game like this with him. He responded, did what he had to do, and we could’ve scored two or three goals because of him.”
And even pundit Ian Wright sung praises of the player speaking on Match of the Day.
The former Arsenal man said: “Ozil was brilliant today. Bournemouth gave him too much space. You could see Arsenal’s players getting forward right until the end.
“There was much more intensity. Arsenal could have won that game but there were plenty of positives and I was very happy with what I saw today.”
While Mesut Ozil was truly inspirational during the draw vs Bournemouth but the German will need to ensure that he keeps churning out such fine performances in order to keep his place under Mikel Arteta.
