Mesut Ozil has become a ‘killer’ in front of goal, claims Arsene Wenger

Arsene Wenger believes he has unlocked Mesut Ozil’s goalscoring potential and claims the Germany international has become a ‘killer’ in front of goal.

Ozil is in the best goalscoring form of his Arsenal career and already has seven for the season in all competitions.

The 28-year-old scored his first ever professional hat-trick against Ludogorets last month in the Champions League and scored a sublime late winner in the return fixture earlier this week.

Wenger claims he always knew Ozil had the potential to be more prolific in terms of scoring goals and sees no reason why he won’t continue to improve.

‘The difference today is he focuses more on efficiency,” Wenger said. “When he arrived here he was more focused on playing. Today efficiency is more in his mind.

‘The main transformation we got from him [is that he] makes more runs in behind to score goals. I always encouraged him. I convinced him that he has it in his locker to score goals.

‘He was more focused on giving and looking [before] – today he understands that he can have those qualities but as well be on the end of things.

‘The timing of his runs is good. In training I noticed he is a very good finisher. When you have that in your locker, you have to try to get it out. Slowly, he now realises that.

‘On top of that he has a fantastic attribute of a guy who is a good finisher – he is calm. You notice all the finishers are killers. That means they keep their nerve in front of goal and he has that.

‘What you want from him is that he continues to play like he does at the moment. That means make the runs like he did in Sofia on Tuesday.