Barney Ronay wrote this week that the “Age of Özil” is over at Arsenal so we thought we’d take a look and see if that’s really the case.

[this post was written before Arsenal’s game at Watford]

The general idea of Ronay’s article in The Guardian is that Özil has failed to adapt as the game has moved on, and as a result he’s just another player moving to the Premier League who fits perfectly on paper, but doesn’t have as much success with his new club as he should.

At least he manages to avoid the cliché of Özil being too lazy for the English game, pointing out that Mesut does actually put a lot more work into each match than he’s given credit for.

Ronay claims that the problem is that it isn’t the right kind of work. When the German should have been finding new ways to win in England, he instead simply continued to play the same way he always has, and opposing sides eventually figured out how to stop him.

Except, when you look at the statistics, they haven’t figured out how to stop him.

In his limited appearances so far this season (thanks to his problems with injuries) Özil has created 3.64 chances per 90 minutes. That’s a greater average than three of the last four seasons. The only time he did better was in 2015/16, when he managed one of the best individual creative seasons I’ve seen in this league.

But, as usual, Arsenal players haven’t been converting those chances. It doesn’t help that Mesut played the early games when the Gunners were missing chances for fun (bar that Leicester match), and then missed out on the easy wins against the likes of West Brom and Brighton.

Perhaps Ronay is right, in a way. If year after year Arsenal forwards fail to convert Mesut’s opportunities, then maybe he’s just not creating the kinds of opportunities that the forwards Wenger buys are good at converting. Lacazette seems like the kind of player who would be able to finish those chances, but so far we haven’t seen it happen.

This season feels like a defining one, in so many ways.

It’s an opportunity for Özil to show his commitment to the club. It’s a chance for him to show that with the right strikers he can really have an impact on this league. With Arsenal dropping down to the second tier European competition, he can also show how he deals with adversity, and that a one off-year isn’t enough to finish his career.

I don’t believe the age of Özil is over just yet, and I don’t think there are enough players around like him to prove that it is.

Ronay has jumped the gun, for me.

But I do think this is a key year for Mesut to commit his future and continue to show his importance, otherwise the team will be forced to move on.