Stats breakdown: Debunking Uli Hoeness’ Ozil outburst

After Mesut Ozil announced that he would no longer represent the German national team - at least under the current regime at the DFB - notoriously outspoken Bayern president Uli Hoeness didn’t hold back in his criticism of the playmaker.

Hoeness implied that he was glad to see the back of the Arsenal man in Die Mannschaft colours, with some scathing comments about the 29-year-old’s form and commitment.

We’ve broken the Bayern supremos quotes down to see if there is any justification behind his sensational remarks of a player that has been scapegoated for both club and country for years.

“He has been playing like s**t for years”

So this is undeniably harsh, but it’s certainly not wayward to suggest that Ozil has been short of his best over the past two seasons at Arsenal. Since making the move from Real Madrid he has regressed to the player that endured a relatively frustrating debut season in England, missing more minutes through injury and illness once more.

In fact, Ozil played a near identical number of minutes last season as he did in his first campaign at the Emirates, with a direct hand in fewer goals. A tally of 12 (four goals, eight assists) was a significant drop off from each of the past two seasons, with 17 in 2016/17 and 25 in 2015/16, which was his best campaign in an Arsenal shirt. His WhoScored.com rating has dropped each season since, from a superb 7.66 to 7.30 and a career low of 7.25 last time out. Hardly a s**t score by any standards, it should be said.

“He last won a tackle before the 2014 World Cup”

Well this is obviously an exaggeration, but criticisms of Ozil’s defensive work rate are nothing new. Taking this literally, the creator didn’t make a single tackle in his two outings as Germany crashed out of the World Cup in Russia, though he did produce six at Euro 2016.

The statement was merely an insinuation that Ozil doesn’t offer enough out of possession, however, and over the past three seasons he has been dribbled past more times (84) in the Premier League than he has made tackles (80).

“All he is doing on the field is playing sideways passes”

This was a pretty outrageous critique of a player renowned for his vision and ability to play that all important incisive forward pass. He did, after all, make the most key passes in the group stages of the World Cup (11) despite missing the game against Sweden.

Of all players to make 20 or more Premier League appearances last season, only 12 averaged more sideways passes per game than Ozil (39.5), but as a proportion of his overall passes, his attempts sideways equated to 56.7 per cent, which ranks 38th of the same group of players, just below Paul Pogba.

“Whenever we (Bayern) played against Arsenal, we targeted him because we knew he was the weak point”

Three consecutive 5-1 victories over the Gunners certainly suggest that Bayern have had their English counterparts number and then some in recent years, facing Arsenal six times in total during Ozil’s spell in North London.

It’s unquestionably true that the German has struggled in said meetings, with a WhoScored.com rating of just 6.49 across all six matches. That’s the lowest score of the 11 players from either side to have featured in at least five, with only Kieran Gibbs (6.47) and Nacho Monreal (6.45) earning worse ratings of those to play in at least four. That said, only Alexis Sanchez secured a higher rating than seven for the London club in said meetings, so to point the finger solely at Ozil is again somewhat unjustified.

“No-one questioned that he was playing c**p at the World Cup”

It’s fair to say that Ozil failed to make his mark in Russia, though it wasn’t for the lack of trying - from a creative standpoint at least. Had any one of the 11 chances he created had been converted things could have been very different for the 2014 champions, and a modest WhoScored rating of 6.93 was actually the fourth best in the German ranks.

The likes of Timo Werner, Manuel Neuer, Marco Reus, Sami Khedira and Thomas Muller all earned significantly lower scores but it was Ozil who bore the brunt of the criticism and has done in a German national shirt for some time.

It’s little wonder, in truth, why he’s had enough, even if his performances on the pitch haven’t been up to his former standards.