Mesut Ozil insists there is still a realistic chance of Arsenal making top four this season.
Arsenal have lost just one of Mikel Arteta’s seven Premier League games in charge but have also only won once.
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The five draws have significantly checked their progress and been a major factor in why they remain 10 points off fourth-placed Chelsea with 13 games left to go.
Ozil, though, says Arsenal now have a platform to build on and all of Arteta’s players are clearer on their roles within his setup.
“Everyone knows,”Ozil said, speaking during Arsenal’s mid-season training camp in Dubai.
“Even the players – let’s say that after 60 or 70 minutes, if that player’s changing, everyone knows now in which position they have to play or how [the manager] wants to attack or make a lot of pressure on the opposite team. This kind of stuff.
“So, right now, everybody knows tactically that we’re improving. It’s just two months that Mikel has been here, and we have improved a lot tactically.
“Of course, now it’s hard times for us. It’s difficult to say because right now everything is not going well, but we know if everything is going well, if the confidence is back and if we take the right results, we will end in the top four, in the top five.
“We have to believe in ourselves, believe in us as a team, to do what the coach wants. We’re in a good way; you see it as well on the pitch, everyone enjoys, everyone is happy. As a player, you have to be happy to give everything on the pitch.”
Ozil’s latest remarks are the second instance where he has taken aim at his former boss, Unai Emery after last month accusing him of having strayed from the club’s key values.
The German midfielder fell out of favour under Emery during his 18 months in charge at the Emirates, starting just 20 league games last season.
“It is basically getting us back to the old Arsenal virtues,’ he told The Sun in January of the side’s start to life under Arteta.
“Fighting and having possession, being in control of the game, having the ball all the time.
“These are the things that he is working on with us and you can see it — everyone is smiling, laughing, enjoying their time — it has made us successful.
“I think he is the right man at this club.”
