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Stats Suggests Ozil’s Return Is The Reason For Sanchez’s Poor Form

By mac14 on March 4, 2015

The graphic below suggests that Mesut Ozil’s return to the first team has been the reason for Alexis Sanchez’s poor form for Arsenal in recent weeks.

The Chilean enjoyed stunning form during the first half of the season, scoring an impressive 17 goals and providing 9 assists in his first 31 games.

However, he hasn’t looked himself recently and he’s gone seven games without registering a single goal and he’s provided just one assist during that time.

That run coincides exactly with the return of Mesut Ozil from his injury, and as the graphic below shows, Sanchez has certainly been far less productive since the German playmaker returned to the side.

Despite continued criticism of his work-rate, Ozil has been hugely influential since he came back from injury as he’s chipped in with three goals and 4 assists in the last seven games, so it’s fair to say he’s ‘stolen’ some of the lime light from Sanchez.

However, I think it’s too simple to just ‘blame’ Ozil’s return on Sanchez’s poor form. Let’s not forget Alexis has been struggling with niggling injuries over the past two months which have severely inhibited his performances.

He’s also understandably going to have a dip in form at some stage and I personally think he looks a little jaded. This is his first season in the Premier League and the first time he’s had to play intense fixtures over the Christmas and New Year period, so I’d expect him to drop off a little in January and February.

Sanchez was also played as a central striker for many of those 31 games while Giroud was out, which will obviously have a positive impact on his goals tally.

So I think those are the factors that have resulted in his poor productivity in terms of goals/assists recently, and it’s got very little to do with Ozil’s return.