Why it is wrong to call Mesut Ozil lazy, but his waning influence on Arsenal games is a worry

A player with a languid running style, he can look more than a tad disinterested when the other team have the ball, but the truth is he covers far more ground than most. The problem this season seems to be that play consistently passes him by.

Moved out to the right flank under new manager Unai Emery, Ozil is bound to be less involved than he was as a No 10 under Arsene Wenger, but given how comfortable he is in possession and the fact that being nominally a right-sided midfielder these days does not entail getting chalk on your boots, his input this season has been far too small.

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There were long periods during Arsenal's win over Everton where play was moving back and forth without Ozil contributing anything.

He spent much of the game wandering aimlessly in central positions without touching the ball.

Over the course of the first half, when the visitors created a flurry of openings and Arsenal barely got a foothold in the game, fortunate to go in level at the break, Ozil was almost completely anonymous.

There were many occasions when Arsenal would play out of defence and the game was screaming for their best ball-player to go and demand possession, but Ozil would remain uninterested in grabbing the game, happy to let it pass him by. In the opening 45 minutes, Ozil had just 21 touches of the ball.

Things improved after the break, both for player and team. Ozil had 36 second half touches, Arsenal won 2-0.

Nevertheless, it is a worry that Ozil ended the game with fewer than half the touches taken by Granit Xhaka, and only seven more than goalkeeper Petr Cech.

The effort he is putting in has not waned. Ozil is covering as much ground as he has done in previous seasons - around 10.5km per 90 minutes.

That figure is not dissimilar to many of the Premier League's other leading creators. Eden Hazard covers 10.3km per 90 minutes, David Silva 10.8km and Christian Eriksen 12.3km.

But Ozil is involved in play both far less than his rivals and far less than he used to be for Arsenal. He is averaging five touches per kilometre covered this season, when he has had more than eight per km in each of the three previous seasons.

In five league matches so far this season, Ozil has one goal and no assists. He has created five chances from open play and has had just two shots. That's one chance created per appearance and 0.4 shots. In every previous season at Arsenal his averages have been well over double in both categories.

Adapting to a new system and style of play is at least part of the reason for the drop-off in critical numbers, but it surely cannot be the case that Emery wants Ozil, who, not insignificantly moved from shirt number 11 to 10 after the new manager's arrival, to float ineffectively on the edge of the action. He did, incidentally, get a chance to play as the No 10 in the defeat at Chelsea, but underwhelmed and was substituted midway through the second half.

Part of the reason Ozil attracts so much negative attention from fans is that he so rarely looks like he is enjoying himself on the football field - something many supporters cannot fathom.

It goes further than that this season. He is now simply not contributing enough to Arsenal's attacking game.

He might well have been affected by his former international team-mates hanging him out to dry for daring to suggest he felt he was the victim of racism when representing Germany.

Or it may simply be that he is losing his touch. Ozil is 30 next month, and while many believe he is slow and painfully laborious in his play, once upon a time he was chief creator in one of the best counter-attacking sides of recent years: Jose Mourinho's title-winning Real Madrid of 2011/12. And then there was the time he put the afterburners on to make Gareth Barry look like he was running through treacle during Germany's 4-1 win over England at the 2010 World Cup.

One can't help but think, as has been the case for Silva under Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, that Ozil's future lies in a deeper position, where he can use his first touch, passing ability and guile to conduct play from in front of the opposition's midfield, with youth and pace out on the wings.

Ozil's burst of energy that was once familiar seems to have gone. The wisdom behind offering him a hefty new contract earlier this year was questionable at the time, and on the basis of the start of this season, out wide and out of sorts, it looks like an even stranger decision.