Rob Holding is one of Arsenal’s longest-serving players at the moment, and he has had his say on two former Gunners who were ‘frightening’ in training – Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
Irrespective of our results and where we finished in the second part of Arsene Wenger’s era at Arsenal, we always had tremendous players at the club.
Ozil and Mkhitaryan were definitely two of them, and Holding has now shared an interesting story about the duo in training a few years ago.
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Rob Holding says Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were frightening in training
Arsene Wenger received a lot of unnecessary and unfair criticism in his final few years at Arsenal, but he still did a fantastic job with the resources he had.
Yes, we couldn’t win the Premier League title even though we came close on a couple of occasions, but some of the football we played was just a joy to watch.
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Mesut Ozil played a big part in that after he signed for us. The German’s vision was truly outstanding, and he was one of the most incredible attacking midfielders we’ve ever had.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan was a brilliant footballer too, even though he didn’t quite have the consistent impact that we all thought he would when we signed him.
Speaking about the best players he has played with at Arsenal, Rob Holding named Ozil and Mkhitaryan and shared a brilliant story about them.
He said on the Jaxxon Podcast: “A lot of Arsenal players have always said Santi Cazorla (is the best) because with both feet, technically he’s so clean. I agree completely and I think he was great, but Mesut Ozil just used to do these magic things and you’d see these little glimpses in training.
“I remember a session, when (Henrikh) Mkhitaryan had just signed. We did a possession-based drill and those two were on the same team. They just completely ran it around us, just passing to each other, barely using anyone else. It was frightening.
“I thought we were going to win the league. I thought with these guys we’re just going to rip it up now and it’s going to be incredible. His (Ozil’s) football intelligence is just so high.”
The Insider’s View:
Wenger only got six months with Mkhitaryan, which is a real shame as we’re sure he would’ve brought the best out of him if he worked with him a little longer.
The Armenian is a delightful footballer. He could score goals, create chances and was just incredible to watch when he was in full flow, but he just couldn’t do it in the Premier League.
Ozil’s brilliance is something everyone already knows about. Regular readers of Arsenal Insider know just how highly we rate him, and it’s just a shame we couldn’t win the Premier League title with him in the side.
Now, though, both of them are long gone, and hopefully Arsenal can go all the way with the brilliant players we have at our club right now.