Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Özil have been the Gunners’ star players for the last few years, but the question of which one is more important is being asked more and more.

Both are in the last year of their current contracts, so it’s probable that at least one of them will leave. If one of them does, that will free up a lot of room in the budget to spend on extending the contract of the other, so to some extent it makes sense for people to ask which the Gunners would be better off keeping.

We’re going to try and determine which of the two has been more important to the side since joining:

Goal contribution

Although this is a very simplistic way of looking at two players, especially players ones who don’t play the same position, it’s often what people are most interested in, since goals are the factor that decides games.

According to transfermarkt.co.uk, Alexis has scored 73 and assisted 44 in 151 matches for the Gunners, whilst Özil has scored 32 and assisted 57 in 166. That leaves Alexis with 0.77 goals or assists per game, and Özil with 0.54.

I would like to point out that these stats can be misleading.

For example, looking at last season in the league, Alexis outscored and out-assisted Mesut.

However, while he had 10 assists to Özil’s nine, Mesut created 98 chances to Alexis’ 78. So Özil was creating more, the rest of the team were just missing the opportunities.

Of course, the German would be expected to provide more, given his position in midfield.

Alexis also scored three times as many goals as Mesut (24 vs 8), but took more than three times the number of shots (128 vs 40).

So Özil was actually more clinical, he just wasn’t playing up front to get as many chances as Sanchez did.

Team performance with and without

Perhaps a better way to judge the two players is on how the team does in their absence.

We’ve looked at the number of league games won, drawn and lost by the team when either player wasn’t around.

Other competitions were excluded because of the large variation in standard of opposition.

For example, Arsenal will probably lose to Bayern Munich and beat Lincoln City regardless of Alexis or Özil’s inclusion.

In Özil’s case, he’s missed 35 league games since joining the Gunners. Arsenal have won 18 of these, drawn eight and lost nine. That’s a 51% win rate when Mesut isn’t around, and 26% of matches lost without the German.

Meanwhile in Alexis’ time so far he’s missed 13 league games. Arsenal have won 8, drawn two and lost three of those. That’s a 62% win rate without him, and 23% of matches lost.

Özil takes this one then, although it should be pointed out Mesut’s record of missing a fifth of Arsenal’s league games isn’t favourable in comparison to the Chilean’s.

Other thoughts

I’d argue that Alexis wouldn’t have joined in the first place if it wasn’t for Özil signing on the previous summer. Playing alongside Özil was clearly a big draw, whilst it’s hard to point to a world class signing Arsenal have made because of Alexis.

On the other side of things, Alexis has scored important goals in important games so many times I’ve lost count.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think Özil is bad in the big games, but it’s hard to deny that Alexis is often even better.

He’s scored in cup finals, and against pretty much every big team we’ve played, as well as stepping up in the big moments, like for a penalty in the 98th minute, or scoring against Bayern in the CL knockout rounds before the defence imploded.

Overall my personal opinion is that the team would miss Mesut more, even if Alexis is often an outstanding individual.

But honestly it will be tough to lose either, and really disappointing to lose both.