David Silva And Mesut Ozil To Decide Their Clusb’s Fate?

They are stylistically similar, defiantly un-English players, unsuited to the straitjacket of 4-4-2. They are twin World Cup winners, slight figures imported from Spain to add class and creativity, but who are more prolific for their countries than their clubs. And yet if Mesut Ozil and David Silva seem kindred spirits, they are separated in perception.

They meet on Sunday with an acute focus on the Arsenal playmaker, but rather less on the Manchester City midfielder. The German is castigated, the Spaniard celebrated but Ozil makes far more headlines while Silva can blend into the background. As Ozil noted this week: “When the team’s on a bad run, somebody needs to be singled out. Sadly, most of the time it’s me.”

He makes for a convenient, if sometimes correctly identified, scapegoat. Blame is dispensed partly as a consequence of a climate of negativity and the unhappiness and uncertainty that surround Arsenal. Their season is unravelling. Ozil’s unsigned contract, with talks postponed until the summer, highlights the ever greater questions about their future. He is a face of ambiguity, Silva, tied down until 2019, a sign of stability. Their circumstances are different.

They have both fashioned chances in abundance, but arguably have taken their respective clubs in different directions. Silva has the most assists in the division since his debut (62). Ozil came within one of equalling Thierry Henry’s Premier League record when he mustered 19 last season.

Yet the German was bought to propel Arsenal back into title contention after their age of austerity ended. They have won two FA Cups in his time in London, but he was utterly ineffectual in the first final and they threaten to finish seventh this year. It is shaping up as their worst league campaign for at least 21 years.

In contrast, Silva is a proof of progress. In his debut season for City, they won their first major trophy for 35 years. In his second, they won the league for the first time in 44. It reflects on their respective employers, Arsenal were used to contending and City to tragicomic disappointment before each signed, but it also shows that the different curves the two clubs have been on.

But Ozil would not rank in the greatest Arsenal XI of Arsene Wenger’s reign: not when Dennis Bergkamp and Cesc Fabregas are available. Silva would not merely secure a place in City’s finest ever side. Mike Summerbee recently suggested he could be their best ever player and the club ambassador was a long-time teammate of Colin Bell, the man many long thought deserved that tag.

Perhaps it helped that he arrived to lower expectations. Whereas Ozil was Arsenal’s £42.4 million record signing, Silva cost a smaller sum, £24 million, and arrived in a summer when Yaya Toure, Mario Balotelli, Aleksandar Kolarov and James Milner commanded similar fees, and a year after Carlos Tevez cost far more. He was not seen as a one-man answer to anything, which surely suited an unassuming figure. Ozil was propelled into a position of prominence by his price tag.

Arsenal seem a team built around him, increasing his culpability when things go wrong, whereas Silva slots in around others. The Spaniard has played on the right and on the left, as a No. 10, an inside-left and even a more conventional, deeper central midfielder in his City career. He can knit the team together from a variety of positions. The direct comparison is with Ozil, but he has something of Santi Cazorla about him, the passer who plays the assist to the assist.

Silva plays everywhere in the midfield, coaxing the best from his teammates, whereas Wenger invariably picks Ozil as a No. 10. It contributes to the sense that he has stymied others’ development, receiving preferential treatment in a way that has hampered Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

It makes Ozil a contentious subject in a way Silva is not. Off the field, the City man is a low-maintenance footballer: virtually no interviews, hardly any commercial commitments and a lifestyle that remains shrouded from almost everyone. He has the talent of a superstar and the profile of a nobody. He has no contractual issues. His longevity means his loyalty is taken for granted. He barely utters a word in English but is seen as one of City’s own.

When he underperforms, and he was especially poor in the first half of the Champions League defeat in Monaco, he is excused. When Ozil is found wanting, it is flagged up.

The German can seem to personify Arsenal’s failings, with questionable body language and a mediocre record in marquee matches. He has talent and technique but perhaps not the temperament required. His troughs in form are deeper and have lasted longer than Silva’s. It is a reason why criticism is more concentrated. When off-colour, he can be more conspicuously bad.

But, while Silva has often helped determine defining games with elusive movement and precise passing, it is Ozil’s big-game record that is arguably the most damaging part of the case for the prosecution. Arsenal against Manchester City was always going to be big but, given the Gunners’ spring slide, it assumes seismic proportions for them. And therefore, Ozil, as he recognised himself, is likely to be in the eye of the storm if they lose.