Emmanuel Petit has advised Arsene Wenger he should buy Riyad Mahrez and sell the “defeatist” Mesut Ozil.
Mahrez, 26, has always voiced his desire to quit Leicester City, with Arsenal tipped by British media as a potential destination for the 2015-16 PFA Player of the Year.
Petit said “He knows the Premier League by heart, and has an incredible impact in it,” he said. “He’s the kind of player cruelly lacking for Arsenal down the right.
“I say stop focusing on the problems at the back. I’m among those who think the further away the ball is from your goal, the less chance you have of conceding a goal. And the more players you have who are capable of holding on to the ball… How many players are there in world football of that profile?
“If I were a coach I’d love to have dribblers in my team — quick, technically good, capable of saying [to a defender], ‘I’m going to humiliate you with two feints, two step-overs.’ There aren’t many dribblers. Arsenal only have one, that’s Alexis Sanchez. They have a lot of guys who run quickly, but they run in a straight line.”
“It’s been a while since he played a good game, and even longer since he put a string of good performances together,” Petit said of Ozil, who has not contributed a goal or assist in three Premier League outings this term. “He’s still able to put in one good performance, but good performances over three, four, five weeks… I don’t think we’ll see Ozil at that level again.
“What disappoints me most is his attitude, his defeatist attitude on the pitch, his nonchalance that transmits to his teammates. Arsene keeps him on the pitch. If I were the coach, I’d say, ‘Mesut, you want to leave? There’s the door. Be sure to close it on the way out.’ If I were Arsene Wenger, I’d say, ‘Get out.'”
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