Mesut Ozil critics are 'stupid' and should respect his success, says Arsenal team-mate Shkodran Mustafi

1/47
Dan Kilpatrick @Dan_KP20 November 2017

Shkodran Mustafi has labelled critics of his Arsenal and Germany teammate Mesut Ozil as "stupid" and says the World Cup-winning playmaker should be judged on what he has achieved in his career.

Contract-rebel Ozil has repeatedly taken flak for his application in an Arsenal shirt and earlier this month club legend Lee Dixon told Standard Sport he would "drive him to the airport right now" if he did not try harder.

But there was no faulting Ozil's effort in the 2-0 win over Tottenham on Saturday and his spirited pressing from the front helped Arsenal to dominate their much-fancied north London rivals.

"If you look at what Mesut has achieved, you have to give him credit," goal-scorer Mustafi said. "It's stupid to just go out and say, 'He's not good enough. He's not this, he's not that'. You have to see what he has done in his career and you have to give him credit and respect that."

All three of Mustafi’s Premier League goals have now been assisted by Ozil, whose free-kick was headed home by the centre-back before Alexandre Lacazette crossed for Alexis Sanchez to score a second before half-time.

It was only the third time Ozil, Sanchez and Lacazette have started together in the Premier League and it coincided with another impressive performance from Arsene Wenger's side. The others were the 5-2 victory at Everton, when all three scored, and the 2-1 win over Swansea, both in October.

Asked if the trio are as good as any attack in the country, Mustafi said: "That's what I was saying before. We know if we can keep a clean sheet and we don't concede a goal, we have the quality and potential up-front to always score.

"We have it with Alexis, we have it with Mesut and we have it with Lacazette. Even when Danny Welbeck and Oli [Olivier Giroud] come off the bench, they have scored a lot of times, especially Oli from the bench.

"We know if we can keep a clean sheet, we're in the game. Even against Swansea, when we went down a goal, we always know that we can score goals. In the end, it's about how compact we are: keeping the shape, being disciplined. We know we have the quality up-front to score goals."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT