Is This The Year Of The Ox?

By Matty Sadler
December 4 2016

Upon signing for Arsenal, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain quickly became one of my favourite players. He had a slightly unfair advantage because I always used to sign him for my Arsenal team on Football Manager 2011, but there’s more to it than that. He has pace and power in abundance, and for me, there are few more exciting sights in football than watching a direct, attacking winger terrorising a helpless full back.

Comedian Alan Davies, on his now far too infrequent “The Tuesday Club” podcast, spoke about how he had attended an event to commemorate The Invincibles, and Oxlade-Chamberlain had been the only one of our current players to attend. That may not seem like a particularly important detail, but I totally appreciated and respected that he really wanted to know exactly what it meant to play for the Arsenal. I also enjoy his “bromance” with Carl Jenkinson.

Now, here’s the thing; I am not an immature 11 year old or a slightly odd obsessive fan like that “carlamberlain” on Instagram. Just because I like a player, it doesn’t mean the player can do no wrong. It doesn’t mean that I have to ignore his negatives, defend his honour no matter what, berate anyone who dares to criticise him or automatically dislike any players who are a threat to his place in the team. Before the start of this season, I don’t think many would’ve argued if I’d said that Oxlade-Chamberlain had failed to deliver on his early promise.

“The Ox” was used sparingly at the beginning of his first season at Arsenal, 2011-12, but by the end of the season he had established himself as one of the most exciting young talents in England, if not the world. Unfortunately subsequent campaigns haven’t filled us with quite so much joy. For the purposes of this piece I have gone back through all of his previous seasons and looked at all of his “moments”, good and bad. I won’t bore you by listing them all here, but I can confirm it has been a mixed bag. Instead, I’ve picked out three “moments” that I believe most typify his Arsenal career to date;

1) He marked his successful return after nearly five months out injured during the 2013-14 season by scoring twice from central midfield as he beat Crystal Palace 2-1 almost entirely on his own, and starred during the early stages of our triumphant FA Cup run, but is unfortunately best remembered that season for his needless handball on the line, that led to Kieran Gibbs being wrongly sent off, during our 6-0 humiliation against Chelsea. 2) He came off the bench during our disastrous Champions League tie with Monaco midway through 2014-15, scoring an excellent goal to get us back into the game, but just three minutes later he lost possession in the build up to the goal which essentially handed them the tie.

3) After capping a promising pre-season by scoring the winner against Chelsea in the Charity Shield at the start of the 2015-16 season, he rather unrealistically targeted one “goal involvement” (goal or assist) per game. Nothing wrong with a bit of ambition, but he went on to finish the calendar year 2015 without providing a single Premier League goal or assist.

It has very much been a case of one step forward and two steps backwards. More specifically though, what have been the problems? Of course injuries have been the biggest stumbling block, as they seem to be for a lot of Arsenal players. Carelessness in possession, sloppy passing and overplaying it in dangerous areas have been some of the more common “football-specific” issues, not uncommon for young players, but Oxlade-Chamberlain was approaching 23 and not a kid anymore. The biggest football-specific issue for me, personally, has been the lack of consistent end product. Goals win games, and you can forgive other shortcomings if a player is getting regular goals and assists. He hasn't. Another injury in February ended his 2015-16 early, and for the first time there was genuine doubt and speculation surrounding his Arsenal future. It was not hard to see why. His contract runs out in June 2018 and despite being here for five seasons he was yet to establish himself as a regular starter. Joel Campbell didn’t get much of a chance that season but showed far superior vision and quality in the final third, while Alex Iwobi emerged as the new golden boy, with both bettering Oxlade-Chamberlain’s “goal involvement” total, despite playing considerably less.

Oxlade-Chamberlain looked very sharp this pre-season, but that wasn’t anything to get excited about as we have seen him look sharp in pre-season before. With Alexis upfront I felt Oxlade-Chamberlain may struggle. The Ox is very much a “traditional winger”, not a particularly prolific passer or “playmaker”. Many of his better moments have involved his low crosses to a forward (mostly Giroud, but Gervinho, Podolski and Welbeck have benefited as well). Alexis is far from a conventional “forward” and is often everywhere BUT the penalty area, making crossing ineffective at times. This turned out to be pretty accurate, as the Ox started the season as a backup player to Iwobi, with the youngster’s far superior use of the football better complimenting Alexis upfront and Walcott on the right. It was reported in September that we were stalling over a new deal, and in October Oxlade-Chamberlain himself spoke about possibly needing to leave the club for regular football. It felt like he was entering “last chance saloon”. Now or never time.

Oxlade-Chamberlain scores first goal of the game during the FA Community

I have to say though Oxlade-Chamberlain’s response has been pretty promising. Ignoring his awful set piece delivery, I’m pleased to say I haven’t noticed him giving the ball away as much. With five goals (now six as written before West Ham away), this is already his best seasonal goal return and we’re only in December, but the goals are an added bonus and not what has really impressed me most. We’ve unfortunately become far too accustomed to Oxlade-Chamberlain’s wild, over hit crosses going into orbit. A Theo Walcott injury handed him a rare start against Sunderland in October, and he finished a 22-pass team move by floating in an excellent cross for Alexis to head home. Amazingly this was only the third time that an Arsenal player has scored a header from an Oxlade-Chamberlain cross. He proved it wasn’t a fluke two games later he came off the bench and hung up another excellent cross, this time for Giroud to head in a late equaliser against Man United. This meant that in just three appearances he had already doubled the “Arsenal player scoring a header from an Oxlade-Chamberlain cross” tally.

It hasn’t been perfect from him though. After his assist against Sunderland, he was actually pretty useless and missed two good chances, and in a recent game against Bournemouth he only created one chance in 75 minutes. Not perfect, but with 9 “goal involvements” (5 goals, 4 assists), he has already matched his best ever seasonal tally (2013-14), so already this is an improvement on last season. Touch wood, he appears to be having better luck with injury as well.

When Walcott was Oxlade-Chamberlain’s age, he stepped up with 21 goals and 16 assists, his best season to date. After a less than perfect November this team is in need of a lift. Can he be the man to do it? Iwobi’s loss of form and Alexis still being used upfront over Giroud has opened things up for him. He has been picked to start this evening against West Ham for the second league game in a row and has a huge opportunity to impress. With his contract up at the end of next season, surely he is playing for his future? End product is the name of the game.

So what say you all? Is he finally turning a corner, or is it too soon to tell? Can he follow in Walcott’s footsteps, or is this all a bit premature? Am I getting ahead of myself, or can 2016-17 be the Year of the Ox?