Player Focus: Why Oxlade-Chamberlain Has to Start for England
Quite why everybody is so fixated with Mesut Özil’s withdrawal through injury at half time of Arsenal’s Champions League draw at the Allianz Arena on Tuesday rather than the outstanding performance of the youngest player on the pitch – a player who missed a huge chunk of the season through injury and showed no sign of being overawed by the intimidating surroundings of Bayern Munich’s home – is utterly bemusing. Rather than praise a young man who could be England’s best hope of lighting up this summer’s World Cup in Brazil, we are forced to go over whether the Gunners’ record signing is too tired, injured, didn’t ‘fancy it’ or is not quite as good as he was originally cracked up to be.
Whatever the reason – almost certainly his hamstring injury – the point remains that Özil was largely peripheral in his 45 minutes, while Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain carried the fight to the opposition and looked the visitors best chance of inspiring an unlikely comeback. Of course, that comeback never materialised, but Oxalde will have done much to pacify not only Arsenal fans worried at a lack of options in midfield with Walcott, Wilshere and now Özil out injured, but also England fans that fear the national team is always too rigid to make any significant progress at the major tournaments.
Most noticeable was Oxlade’s confidence on the ball. Time and again he drove forward, relieving the pressure that was building on the Arsenal back line as Bayern unsurprisingly enjoyed 67% possession and probed for a goal. Whenever the ball went out of play, Bayern rushed to get it back in and the tempo with which they played gave Arsenal little time to settle or get organised. They struggled to work their way forward with their usual passing game. Özil completed just 58% of his passes, Podolski 76% and Oxlade 74%, and each time they gave it away another wave of Bayern attacked ensued.
When Oxlade-Chamberlain ran with the ball at his feet, though, with Bayern so high up the pitch they looked wary of challenging him, his quick feet a major threat to their backtracking defenders. With only 7 minutes on the clock he beautifully controlled a ball Santi Cazorla had played up the line and drove at Dante, who stood no chance against Oxlade’s pace and took him down, making little attempt to play the ball and gratefully accepting a yellow card that may have been red if Franck Ribéry had not been covering. Later, the Southampton youth team graduate ran from his own half, beat or outpaced 3 men and drew a foul from Thiago Alcántara in a dangerous position. Oxlade completed as many successful dribbles as the whole Bayern
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- Pic: Bild accuses Franck Ribery of smoking weed