Mesut Özil will continue his reintegration into the Arsenal team at Brighton & Hove Albion in Sunday’s FA Cup tie but the German may have to get used to a position he does not like.
Özil has not started since suffering knee ligament damage in the defeat at Chelsea in early October and is eager to regain a central playmaker role in an Arsenal side who have found success without him, as shown by last week’s victory at Manchester City. Özil struggled before his injury and Alexis Sánchez and Santi Cazorla have performed so impressively Arsène Wenger suggests his £42m recruit from Real Madrid may have to settle for starting out wide, albeit with licence to roam infield.
“I see him behind the striker or on the flank, where he doesn’t like to play,” Wenger said. “I prefer him central. In our team it’s very flexible anyway. When you play on the flank, you can move inside. We usually have one player who is more a winger and another more midfield.”
Özil has used his absence from the pitch in the last three months to spend more time in the gym and has bulked up in the hope of making himself better able to thrive in the Premier League. “He has worked hard,” Wenger said. “He wants to be stronger and he had more time to focus in the gym on upper body work because he didn’t have to focus on the fatigue of games.”
Wenger has no doubts Özil will rediscover the form that won him such acclaim in the first half of last season and suggested the returns of the German and Theo Walcott, who has yet to regain full sharpness after almost a year out with injury, could be perfectly timed as Arsenal look to finish the season strongly.
“Özil is a fantastic football player and he will come back very strongly,” Wenger said. “We have some players who are completely fresh and rested. Every game is important and I have to use players who have not played for nearly four months or, in the case of Theo Walcott, for one year. That’s not easy, I have to use them at the right moment.”
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Héctor Bellerín are unlikely to feature against Brighton because of minor injuries, and Danny Welbeck is out for at least another two weeks.