“If you love to watch football,” Arsène Wenger said on Saturday, after Arsenal temporarily went top of the Barclays Premier League for the first time in many months, “you love to watch Mesut Özil.”

He is right, isn’t he? There is something beautiful about the killer pass. Finding the ball that unlocks the defence: the cut inside, perhaps, that a forward can run on to without having to break his stride, or the cross that curls beyond the craning necks of defenders, rather like Özil’s to the head of Olivier Giroud against Everton at the weekend.

Özil has not always fired for Arsenal, but over recent weeks he has invariably excelled. His assist ratio is now the highest in the history of the Premier League