In the summer of 2013 we were heavily linked with Gonzalo Higuain and ended up being pipped to his signing by Napoli. On deadline day we eventually signed Mesut Ozil.
We all know Wenger only seems to make one marquee signing per summer now and in all likelihood we wouldn’t have signed Ozil if we had signed Higuain.
So my question is - 3 years on - who would you have rather we signed and why?
0 voters
Higuain would have been better for us but Ozil is the better player. He’s genuinely world class and a rare joy to watch. Not his fault Wenger can’t build a team around one of the greatest playmakers to ever live.
Ozil! Just give him a decent striker ffs! And he’ll change the whole dynamics of the team. It’s pathetic to have him for 3 years without a decent striker in front of him.
I don’t think it would have changed our results, so Mesut because of his tekkers 
Higuain. In the 2012 season we were struggling for goals and Wenger was chasing an all round striker all summer, but ended up signing Ozil. It actually turned out to be a trade-off between being more clinical vs.creating even more chances. Ozil did add more creativity, but we are still struggling to get a WC striker who can put away all the chances we create.
Chances are we would have performed better with a clinical striker as our midfield wasn’t half bad back then with Santi in the #10 role supported by Ramsey, Wilshere and the wingers.
I think at this stage it is fairly clear that it would have been easier to find an appropriately talented attacking midfielder than it has been to find a striker of the required ability.
So in that sense probably Higuain. But I’m not sure really, I do love having Mesut here.
Didn’t we stop our interest in Higuain because of Suarez and the possibility of him moving or am I thinking of a different summer?
Real shifted the price so we gave up and went after Suarez.
With Hindsight & lack of strikers in market, the answer seems Higuain.
But Ozil has always been the better of two and if he signs a contract, would give us more yeas of service.
So for requirement of the club, Higuain.
Between competition of two players, Ozil.
Since we already have Ozil & Higuain bejng a fat lump, Ozil wins.
Hm, I got to read back on that summer it seems.
I know it’s a hypothetical question, but I think it’s a bit weird picking those two.
On the question asked, probably Özil, but with the thought in mind that we went for the superior player (in comparison to Higu) in Suarez earlier.
Ozil is one of my favourite Arsenal players ever - but I’m leaning towards Higuain just because I don’t feel that chance creation has really been an issue over the last few years (I know we have Mesut to thank for that) but the lack of a clinical finisher actually cost us the title last season.
As much as we’re crying out for a natural born finisher I’d go for Özil with out a shadow of a doubt he’s such a joy to watch.
It’s a tough one. Mesut is the player I enjoy watching most, by far the most skillful player we have. We do really lack a world class forward though, so with hindsight Higuain or Suárez probably would have given us a slightly better chance of winning a title.
Nah, we never made an approach for Higuaín. It’s arguable whether we even had any real interest. Judging by the way his family (agents) tried to drum up interest in the media, and encourage a bid from us, and given the fact that El Confidencial here in Madrid reported that there never was an approach, and so did Ornstein, it seems pretty sure that we never did in fact make an approach, and that the farthest we might’ve gone is making contact with Higuaín’s family/agents through an intermediary.
Oh and to the question: Özil without a shadow of a doubt.
Disagree that we didn’t need Özil at the time he was signed. Cazorla was our only quality creative player at the time. Better yet, you can really notice how much he’s missed when he isn’t playing. That Stoke game from last season really sticks out in my mind, no Özil and we lose more than 50% of our attacking threat.
In all honesty if we were brave we would have went for 2 of the 3. When you think that 2 of them could have been had for under a hundred million it really makes you lament our timidness in the market.
Yea, we could have also just bought Draxler last season or a whole lot of players over the year. It’s the idea of minimizing (financial) risk at any cost which is so annoying with Arsenal, which even goes to the point where we’re not even moving players on, but put unlimited faith in them to succeed.
You would at least think that Wenger being the economist he is he would want to be looking to spot trends and buy players that can benefit us for a number of years and then be moved on for a profit. I mean talk about killing two birds.
The ironic thing is that he’s actually pissed away quite a lot of money on attempting to make stars lately, paying 16 mil for Chambers and Ox looks a much poorer investment than say buying an already established player and shifting him on once he’s came in and done a job for you. Hell if we were to sell Alexis or Ozil today it’s very likely we could get nearly double what we spent for them.
Ugh everything is just such a mess atm with the club and it’s only going to get worse. I miss the days when at the very least we could brag about our finances like idiots because our team wasn’t playing like a pub side on the pitch.
Ozil only because I always hold out hope that Wenger will go, we manage to keep hold of ozil, and we get a manager to properly build a squad around him.
At the time if offered a straight choice I’d have gone for Ozil. We only had one season of Giroud at that stage and he’d done alright and it also looked like we might have been onto something with Theo as a CF too.
In hindsight my answer is Higuain especially so considering Cesc became available again the following summer. But who knows how that might have worked out…