Mesut Ozil’s Neverending Story

I guess I have to write this. Maybe I don’t? I don’t know. I know that I don’t want to write this. I know that I want to go back to sleep for a few hours.

Arsenal left Ozil off the 25 man roster yesterday and today Ozil put out a statement and that being something of big actual news, and this being something of an Arsenal fan blog, I guess I have to write about that? But the big problem is that I don’t know if I’m qualified to speak on something that has so many unknowns.

We know for a fact that Ozil’s been dropped. This is the third, consecutive, manager who has dropped Ozil. And the thing is that they drop him even though it hurts the team. I’ve looked at the stats. I can’t say for 100% certain that Ozil made Arsenal better but his data before he was dropped wasn’t bad and the team played better, marginally, in attack and virtually the same in defense. We weren’t great with Ozil, don’t get me wrong, but we did take two more shots per game, with an xG of 0.1 more per game, in the 10 matches before. So, like I said, slightly, very very slightly better in attack. And the goals allowed is actually slightly higher (0.9 v. 1.2) while the xG against is literally the exact same. So, we haven’t gotten better defensively, though people seem to think we have.

None of that is me saying that I would include Mesut Ozil in the Arsenal 25 man list. That is me saying that it just deepens the mystery. Mikel Arteta absolutely knows – way better than I can with my kid’s chemistry set of stats over here – what he wants to do with this team and this squad. And he has far superior stats to me in terms of performance-related metrics. I know for a fact that Arteta is data driven. All of that isn’t to say “Arteta knows best” but rather that I feel confident Arteta is making a decision with the best information possible.

Of course as soon as I say that, then I get the response that the club are the ones forcing Arteta to drop Ozil. If that’s your opinion, okey dokey. I don’t want to traffic in conspiracy theories. I will say that the least plausible of all of them is the one where it’s believed he was dropped for speaking out on China’s treatment of the Uighurs. He said something in December of 2019 and actually was a regular starter for Arteta between the 26th of December and March. The only actual and even vaguely probable conspiracy is that he’s been dropped for refusing the pay cut. But it’s important to say that we just don’t know.

What I will say is that in my opinion the Arsenal Football Corporation have been acting a bit of a shambles. Asking the players to agree a pay cut, getting them to agree to a pay cut by using Bellerin and Arteta as the messenger, and then turning around and laying off 56 people, including Gunnersaurus. And not only that but stumping up a huge pay increase to Auba, paying Willian and Soares massive, massive salaries. And then spending 80m on Gabriel and Thomas. The latter also got a huge signing on fee, in addition to a top 5 salary at the club.

I stood with Ozil against that pay cut. I agreed with his agent that the club needed to be more transparent, that they needed to tell the players why they needed to agree to the cuts, and that they needed to drop the coercion (having Arteta be one of the messengers). But the players agreed, all but three, and I don’t blame them. They are all team players. No one wanted to be an outcast.

Ozil’s statement doesn’t directly say that the club have dropped him for being outspoken but highly implies that. He speaks of a lack of loyalty from the club and ends with the promise to remain outspoken. It’s a finely crafted statement from the man and his PR team: perfectly crafted to say something without saying something directly.

But my final answer here is “I don’t know.” Maybe the club are pressuring Arteta to drop Ozil. Maybe Arteta doesn’t like how Ozil’s training or doesn’t like how he’s so outspoken against the club and how he’s not fitting in with the other players. Maybe this, maybe that. We don’t know.

It’s a shame that this is how his Arsenal career will end. Worse, it’s a shame that we – Arsenal supporters – will be talking about this end of his career for probably the rest of our lives. And the absolute worst is that we will never agree. Even if the club makes a statement, even if Ozil lets out “the truth”, there will never be agreement.

In a few years this will die down. We will have another controversy to talk about. Then someone will write an article about “Mesut Ozil’s time at Arsenal” and we will once again litigate this story. Just like we did with Fabregas.

Qq

41 comments

  1. Frankly Im tired of reading and talking about Ozil and I know that you are too. Still you have to write about and thanks for doing so.

    Me thinks Ozul will be remembered like Charlie Nickols, Champagne Charlie, who were shown the door when Graham took over.

    Lovely player and very talented who unfortunately didn´t apply himself and never came close to the heights that his talents implied.

  2. Thank you for that, very well put. All any of us can say about this is that we do not know. Anything else is opinion, speculation and potentially gossip.

  3. I wrote in The Athletic a few days ago that if Ozil was NOT consistently putting mediocre numbers before the lockdown, he will surely be on the team. Fact is, Ozil lost his bargaining power once his quality dropped. Now we are just talking about conspiracies and the reasons why this saga has reached its nadir. Both AFC and Ozil are to equally blame and Arteta doesn’t come out looking good either. The club could have stepped back and solved this behind the scenes. I believe Raul made this an ego issue and then everybody dug in. Ozil is no saint either. He knew long time ago that Arsenal wanted him gone. He just kept manipulating the situation to portray himself as the victim. I really wished this was not how it was going to end but once Europa league squad was released we know his game was up. Thanks for some wonderful memories Ozil. Wish you had let your feet do the talking.

  4. the only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know everything. what we do know is that mesut doesn’t fit into the current scheme arteta has employed. we also know that mesut is absolutely good enough to play in this side.

    last week, arsene wenger said something very true about mesut. he does things that very few people can do. it’s what makes football as well as other forms of entertainment special; you get to be awed when watching people do things that you can’t do.

    arteta’s approach is very conservative, in my opinion. this approach has made mesut’s inclusion redundant. however, a slight tweak of the system would make room for a very special player while also making arsenal more exciting to watch (i did preface by saying “in my opinion). think of the movie, gladiator, when russell crowe’s character displays an extraordinary sequence of violence and screams to the crowd “are you not entertained!” that’s how mesut responds whenever he’s reintroduced to the team. by him being dropped, we lose the freedom to yell back at our champion: SPANAIRD-SPANIARD-SPANIARD!!!!!

    1. how many regulars on this forum have expressed indifference about watching arsenal. why? because they’re no longer entertained. very few people in the world can do what mesut can do.

  5. Pretty obvious that his impact on the team is marginal and every time he plays we have to pay more money so why play him?

  6. Good balanced article. Resignation is the default state when it comes to this issue. The saving grace is that there is only about half a year to go.

    1. I have been on Özil’s side before. Apart from enjoying his contribution in Wenger’s setup, I have been very directly against his drop which Emery describes as a “strategy” of the club, and I was totally supporting the “We got Ozil” chants from the stands, who saw the German as the antidote to the fall. I have also been at the side of the player and against the club (and particularly against Sanllehi) in every standoff with a player – starting with Ramsey and going to Koscielny.

      But, as Tim says: when facts change, I change my opinion.

      Özil have been given clean sheet by Arteta, like everyone else. First he started, then he was benched, then he was dropped out of the squad. One can decide that it is because of the pay cut, but for me is easier to believe that it was down to performance. I know that Mesut clearly believed that “he was ready”, but it doesn’t mean that he was. What is harder for me to imagine is that the club (and with Sanllehi gone this would mean Edu) has pushed harder to drop him now that before the Covid break, and even harder to believe that Arteta has succumbed to that pressure and has not called a player that he personally have seen as valuable.
      So Occam’s razor simply lads me to the conclusion that Özil has not been good enough.
      Sure, even if training at 50% he might have been better than Matt Smith, who made it to the FA Cup final squad, as he was supposed to be. See, to be a club record signing and to “commit yourself to a contract” is not only a privilege, but also a responsibility. And teh non-negotiables apply to you even more, not less.

      And finally, I cannot understand and I do not support Mesut’s disappointment of how thins have panned out. It was clear that he was not in the plans, but has insisted: “When I signed a contract, I signed it for three years, and people should respect that. I decide when I leave”. And the club is respecting it and paying his part. And although that he claims that loyalty is hard to come by, the club has paid him his 8m loyalty bonus. So if he is claiming that he is fulfilling his contract, so is the club.

      And one last thing: did you notice how his twitter message bore the header of his personal brand?
      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ek2VWp1WAAASanU.jpg
      Even when he talks about his love for Arsenal, his eyes are clearly on his next step, his business, where it will be great if he can carry over his Gooners suporters.

  7. There are two big football stories these past 24 hours relevant to Arsenal fans. Both unfortunately speak to the corrosive influence of money. Stepping back To the Summer when we allowed Ozil and Alexis to run their contracts into the final 12 months. Both were asking for outrageous pay deals and funnily enough it transpired that only one of them could meet their financial demands elsewhere. The Sanchez interview recently where he bemoaned moving to United showed a footballer whose life and big decisions are made for him, moved solely for the purpose of money and unfortunately came across as a really stupid man. Ozil is clearly not a stupid man but the other similarities remain. It’s funny that we speak of the corrosive influence of billionaire owners but in Sanchez and Ozil (and Pogba and others) it’s a salutory tale of individual ego and greed ruining two careers.

  8. Good analysis, Tim. I appreciate that you looked at the cold hard stats of the matter. It is true as you, Bun and Josh have said, we don’t know what we don’t know. But I’ll assume that we all can work SOME things out through simple deductive arithmetic. Even the arch diplomat Arsene Wenger has said it is more than the football. To which I say, “duh.”

    Ozil started/played all 10 of Arteta’s matches before the pandemic, and not a single one — not ONE minute — after. He went from 100%, 100 mph to dead stop without even gearing down. I mean, really? He is, technically speaking, NOT considered one of the best 30 players at Arsenal. He’s not the player he was, but come on. Simple application of basic deduction blows up the lazy/not training/doesnt want to play football/content only to bilk Arsenal theory, or any of the conflicting and contradictory explanations that have come from the coach and the club. If he doesn’t fit into/buy into Arteta’s way of playing in July, he sure did 100% before the break, no? I love Arteta (Im sure I can dig up his old Number 8 shirt somewhere), but he’s just not as smooth a fib teller as Arsene (he of the sly smile and twinkle).

    Im not saying Mesut is a dog on tracking back and harrying… I’ve criticised him plenty for that. But look at 10 minutes of any of our keen but tactically not there youngsters and 10 minutes of Mesut and tell me — even as a diffident tackler — what you think. Elneny does the same “shadow/pretend tackle” thing that Mesut does. He’s been starting games for us. To be clear, I fully accept that Mesut’s time is up, and that he annd the club should end things asap, for the good of everyone. I dont pine for his return to the upper midfield.

    Here’s what I know, as an ex journo with some contacts. The club and the player had a falling out over the salary cut thing, and he was ill advised to publicly embarrass them like that. Trying to embarrass them again with the Gunnersaurus employee stunt made things worse. Plus, he was paid a “long servant” bonus on top of his salary (Ive seen 8m GBP bandied about, but dont know how true that is), and he was due more money based on appearances.

    fwiw, here’s my deduction based on the evidence, and common sense. The rookie coach was ordered not to select him again for a game of any importance or magnitude, not even a friendly. What’s he going to do? Tell Josh and Vinay no? He could have gone around the training ground kicking lumps out of big bad dudes like Gabriel, and it would not have made a blind bit of difference to his selection. Anyone else seen the short vid of that awkward fist bump in training, in which the coach seemed too embarrassed to even look at the player? Ozil and the club are in a death stare, and as they say in divorce proceedings, things have irretrievably broken down.

    And you know what? It is clear to me that this is headed to court when ties are finally severed. Sad. The handling of this (and to some extent the Kosc and Ramsey matters) is one of the reasons I feel less attached to the club than I did, say, 6 years ago. I never missed a game, even if it mean jumping on some pox-ridden feed, or twisting the radio this way and that to get an improved signal in rural Sierra Leone. I doubt that I’ll be watching tomorrow.

    Oh, and read Jonathan Liew in the Guardian, if you havent. He nails it, on this sorry saga.

    1. I don’t see the reason why would the club push the “rookie manager” to drop Özil. he has always made it very clear that he is going nowhere, so I can be quite sure that they will have to pay his salary until the end. And if the club is anyway paying him, why wouldn’t they want to use him at least?

      For me personally dropping Mesut is purely Arteta’s decision, an this is actually quite bold, not rookie decision.

      1. I think that the weight of the available evidence from the start of Arteta’s tenure to now supports my conclusion far better than it does yours. But hey, neither of us has irrefutable evidence, so…

        I can love Arteta, his methods, and his results, and have a fully functional BS detector at the same time.

        1. There’s been Whispers of appearance bonuses tied in with commercial contracts. It could very well be the board giving ozil the middle finger like he gave them the middle finger over the salary cuts.

          Where there’s so much smoke… And all that

  9. Thanks for writing on the Ozil thing despite your quite understandable reluctance to do so. But you’re right, it’s back in the news big time right now and so it’s appropriate to weigh in as a blogger who writes about Arsenal, even if the bottom line for all of us is and should remain (despite some interesting and informed speculation from Claude), “I don’t know.”

    I see the team making incremental progress, but, more importantly, I’m seeing a recognizable vision for the team right now. I almost always agree with Clive on the Arsenal Vision p-cast, so instead of just repeating his comments, I’ll let you listen to his take on the most recent episode…I’ll also say that Phillipe Auclair on Friday’s Arsecast w/ respect to Project Power-Grab was outstanding as usual). As long as that progress and that vision continues apace, people will stop talking about Ozil. But, unfortunately, any blip along the way will see a certain number of fans use Ozil’s omission as a stick with which to beat Arteta, which would be unfair, in my opinion, and in any case, relies on the perception that he’s even sort of the player he was in 2017. Blah blah blah.

    Is this a case of ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’? I don’t know. Maybe given Ozil’s diminished quality, it’s a matter of ‘nicking your nose to spite your face’. Maybe Arteta’s a bit too stubborn for his own good. But maybe, too, we get closer to his vision for how he wants us to play if we make a small sacrifice in the short term.

    Let’s see.

    1. Just a little thought here.

      Creativity isn’t the final pass only, even outside of football, creativity is in how you analyse situations/problems and find the solutions that others can’t even think of. An example would be when trying to play faster and playing a backheel instead of receiving, turning and passing. Dribbling and playing combinations out of the fullback areas when we struggle to get out is an example creativity being applied, without a final pass being present.

      Creativity is in decision making, it is in reading the game and finding unique ways to solve those problems. If the game needs more speed, who can find a way to speed things up? Who can find a way when the team has been figured out? If tactics are nullified, who is going to come up with something quickly, in game, to get around that? Who is going to spot weak spots in the opposition and expose it?

      You watch creativity, not measure it. This is why you can have running, passing, shooting, tackling and many other attributes in football video games, but creativity? Nope, its not quantifiable. Its the same as the intelligence of defenders like Per. He made it to such a high level with such a clear shortcoming in his lack of pace, but his career cant be explained by his tackling or interceptions, you would be doing him a disservice. His decision making and positioning couldnt be quantified. Most important actions on the field rarely go noticed.

      This is why I don’t think Ozil has been our best chance creator for Arsenal since he arrived at the club. From paying close attention to him for over 6 years, I noticed that he is such a deliberate player that he does not play a pass without the run, so the players making the runs had to scan the pitch, spot the space and then make a run to exploit that space, and all Ozil did was assist the chance creators. The benefit was that Ozil has the ability to read the chance creator’s intentions, think of the best way to get the ball to were it needs to be and has the technique to pull the move off.

      That is why I appreciated Ramsey and Monreal so much, and went back to find that Ozil has played with chance creators wherever he has thrived. The runs made by Ronaldo, Benzema, Higuain, Di Maria, Muller and etc, are players that constantly readbthe game and chance chances. Ozil and Nacho were two of the best chance creators in the last decade at Arsenal, and they all did so using their movement.

      I have not seen any of Mesut’s creativity drop off in any way. From the moment Mikel arrived, the games he played showed he has not lost it at all. All that I have seen in Arsenal since Arsene left, is a side that has gradually changed and moved on from chance creators to set play followers. From key passes and assists coming from the player chosen by the coach’s tactics. Creativity isn’t in doing what the coach tells you to do, success from doing that has more to do with your technical quality and your coach’s creativity.

      That’s why I don’t rate Debruyne as creative, but more as technical. He mostly hits a particular area for majority of his “chance creation” and “assists” stats, that his team still looks to hit even when he isn’t around. Eriksson is the same too, a technical player over a creative player.

      So a lack of creativity will continue to show at Arsenal for years to come because we are the team that had one of the last of a special breed, and we somehow spent 7 years judging his best attribute on stats that do not prove how good he is. Also, in giving him credit for the stats, we took away from the players that those stats should have highlighted.

      Just like Ars ene, we will never see what they brought to the side. If Arsenal go for an attacking coach, he will not be as entertaining as Arsene’s team’s. If Arsenal go for a creative player, he will not meet the standards set by Mesut. It shows in how they are praised. Compliments of them are a bit vague and sometimes sound mythical (its really inspiring at times), but it has never been in detail about what they actually brought to the side.

      For people like that, their absence speaks louder than words can, and trying to belittle what they bring will just extend the hurt even further. It is better to not try and replace them, but understand what they truly brought and find an alternative which can allow you to move on from that them.

      So I learned a lot about football from Mesut, in the same way that I learned a lot about coaching from Arsene. Ozil’s performances made me notice and appreciate his teammates’ qualities more, while Arsene made me understand and appreciate how brave and difficult it is to coach attacking football.

      1. Dennis Bergkamp was equally, if not more creative than Ozil but that didn’t stop him from putting in a challenge. Ozil was really good in his time but let’s not turn him into Demi-god. That position is already taken by DB. I think Arteta has decided he will put his lot behind the young players till he finds another player who he can mould into a creative outlet for the team (Ozil ended up with too much baggage).

  10. Hopefully Arteta’s words this evening have put to bed the speculation and narratives. He hasn’t been delivering and the coach has dropped him. Nothing to see here as they say

    1. If only.

      Question 3 especially (the transcript is on Arseblog) is a complete and total dodge by Arteta.

      https://arseblog.news/2020/10/rueful-arteta-insists-ozil-decision-made-for-football-reasons/

      I appreciate that it’s a “when did you start beating your wife” type question, but it is a clear evasion by the coach.

      Arteta had 3 main, PR type talking points that he wanted to make, which he proceeded to do over and over. And tellingly in the case of the third question, he gave this pat answer, even though it bore no relation to the question asked.

      It is what PR coaches describe as “rowing to his island of safety.”

      But I don’t really blame him. The club and player have put the coach in an impossible position.

      1. It’s all such a terrible shame. I can’t comprehend why he’d 1) want to stay somewhere he is no longer welcome and 2) sit out his contract. I mean does he really need the last £10m which he could probably get from MLS? I think he has damaged his earning potential and certainly his ‘legacy’ if the word is applicable is so coloured by the past two years.

      2. That’s an odd interpretation of that third answer if I’m blunt. Did you watch the video? He’s just taking responsibility for the situation.

        This is over for me. I don’t really care what anyone else says.
        The club were awful with the paycut and then the firings but Arteta dropped Ozil because he didn’t want to play him.

        End.

        1. Naw, he dodged the question. And reverted to his talking points.

          But he can’t really answer it, can he?

          1. He could have simply said “I don’t know” and follow the narrative that it is up to the player to show that he wants it more than anyone else, etc.
            Why would he decide to dodge exactly that question? This was one of the easier ones. On the other hand, he really dodged the next one, about what Mesut wasn’t doing on the pitch, although that I don’t think that anyone could really expect to receive a detailed technical answer.

          2. Bai, you make my point for me, unintentionally.

            He came essentially with 3 or talking points he wanted to hit, and even when the question did not relate to TP1, he retreated to his “island of safety”. The effect to me was that he protesteth too much.

            No one comes out of this looking good — not the club, not the player, not the coach.

            Bath, I understand that people are sick to death talking about this, and I felt that way for a while. I can totally understand Tim being sick of it. It’s his blog, and if I had to sit down with a “blank piece of paper” and decide what to write, I’d probably find the subject too groan-worthy to come back to.

            But it is a defining issue, and a consequential development. The club is blackballing its highest paid player and contradicting themselves over it, and it is (to me at least) totally worth examining. We should WANT to get to the bottom of the issue, if, as we admitted, we don’t know everything. If PEA loses a couple of steps in 2 years, this could be him. Which brings me to this… current squad players have been giving social media props to the exile. Know what that means? That it is affecting the squad. It is also dividing the Arsenal family. Keown and Wright have opposite reactions. Mertesacker says the player’s application is spot on.

            You know, I too would like to ignore that persistent niggle in my foot, but the best thing to do is probably see a chiro.

  11. I realize and accept that Ozil isn’t the player that he was.

    The last three managers have left him out and when he has played he hasn’t exactly been a game changer.

    But I do think he gets an unfair amount of criticism for his social media posts in a way that I just don’t see applied to anyone else.

    If he says something bad about Arsenal it’s carefully crafted PR spin and if he says something good about Arsenal it’s carefully crafted PR spin.

    He can’t win.

    And if we’re going down that road isn’t that basically what we all do?

    None of us are putting out comments that we feel might show us in a poor light.

    All of us are consciously saying things we hope will paint us in a good light and making points that we hope will generate sympathy for our positions right?

    Nothing the guy says seems to ever be taken at face value which is fine if he’s lying but essentially puts him in a position where everything he says is dismissed as suspect.

    And I’m really not sure that he’s done enough to earn that kind of automatic distrust.

    I don’t know what the situation with Ozil is. He’s not the player he was but the idea that he’s so bad he can’t make the squad IS kind of weird.

    Maybe he’s just that bad, but I also don’t discount the idea that he’s being frozen out for reasons that aren’t completely based on his footballing skills.

    But I do sympathize with anyone who’s sick of talking about this situation because, like you say Tim, we just don’t know, so it’s all ultimately pointless speculation when it comes to the reality of the matchday squad.

    I guess all I’m saying is that I think it’s possible to believe that Ozil isn’t good enough to get in the current team, while also not automatically dismissing everything he says on social media as just empty narrative manipulation.

    So after all that, basically, I don’t know ha ha 🙂

  12. I would also say Arsenal’s playing style changed since Unai came onboard. Ozil’s role was to make the pre-assist pass than the assist itself. While his performance may have been trending down, the playing style made it worse on the stats people refer to now- assists and goals. But this year, feels really about a hidden contractual commitment (appearances?), and Arsenal Football Club really want him out. I bet once the contract is formally expires the true reasons may come out. But if the contract was mutually terminated early, then lawyers will insert clauses to forbid all parties from discussing the details. Oh well. End of the Arsenal journey for Ozil.

    While I still watch Arsenal, the artistry of football that attracted me to Arsenal in the first place, is no longer there.

  13. Ozil is a great player. He suited Wenger’s playing style. In Wenger’s own words, he needs defensive support around him. Arteta doesn’t play that system, so there is no place for Ozil in his team. The same was the case with Emery, albeit the team was playing so badly at that time that everyone blamed Emery.

    As Tim pointed, clearly the Uighur comment wasn’t an issue as he did start after that.

    Also, it would be silly to think he is dropped because of the wage cut. Apparently two others also refused, but they weren’t dropped?

    Besides it would be silly to forgo a potential champions league place which would be worth tens of millions for a personal vendetta, if Arteta really believed he could improve the team.

    Ozil should just accept that there is no place for him in Arteta’s scheme of things. Not once has Arteta come out or criticised Ozil for anything. Ozil should’ve had some pride and left for another club when he was given a chance – apparently there were offers from middle-east. Where is your pride in sticking around and making up silly excuses? How can you let such talent waste and not find a team that better suits your talent?

    I have been a big fan of Ozil, but his recent behaviour has meant that I’ve lost respect for him

  14. Arsenal’s treatment of Özil, has echoes of the treatment of Wenger and Koscielny, but is the biggest waste of all. One thing that you don’t see mentioned much is the ostracisation and frankly racist treatment of Özil by the German FA and Germany in general (he was informed he was not welcome as a visitor to his former school for Christ’s sake!) in the Summer of 2018 was an opportunity for the club to rally around at the time their star man and one of our own (at least in the sense the kind of player Özil is embodied to a degree how Arsenal were seen, artistic to a fault), a time to stand up against the racism in the manner the premiership likes to pay oh so much lip service too. They failed, instead of putting an arm around him and backing him up when no one else would, it appears quite rapidly the billionaire owner got buyer’s remorse over Özil’s contract (a situation entirely of their own making, as extending Sanchez’s and Özil’s contracts become a matter of pride precisely because of so many previously bungled contracts and transfers, the €18 million per year plus €8 million bonus just about equals the £60 million Arsenal turned down from Man City for Sanchez late in the 2017 window), it’s a rare thing to see a worker get one over the owners in these times, he had a strong hand and played it well and they’ll NEVER forgive him that. Özil is a confidence player who was let away with being a bit lax in training at times by Wenger, but that got the best out of him (and even at his best it’s arguable Arsenal never really had the kind of midfield that would have gotten the best out of him, ie. a proper ball-winner/ball carrier combo, aside from the all too brief Coquelin/Carzola axis and it’s farcical we’ll never get to see him line out with Partey), Arsenal have done nothing but suck the confidence out of him since. On top of that you get a disastrous manager obsessed with building play from the wings and pretty much by-passing the number 10 position. Arteta seemed happy to play him until he wasn’t (including starting him in one of the last pre-season friendlies before the season began). We have Mustafi out injured until December at least, Arteta’s inclusion of an injured Mustafi over Özil in a squad he can re-pick in January pretty much put’s a lie to the idea that this is “football reasons” alone. I can accept pragmatically that he isn’t a presser, maybe he doesn’t put the same shift in training as the rest and increasingly so, and a new regime may want to make an example of someone, fine, none of this is news, but if that was the case I can’t understand then why he featured routinely before the break and then started a pre-season friendly, Claude’s claim of a bust-up over the pay cut absolutely rings true.

    Arsenal aren’t the richest club, or the most successful, but Wenger made Arsenal a place where footballers could be artists and in a sense Messut is the player who most embodied that, certainly in recent years, no longer, in their treatment of Özil they have firmly thrown that ideal in the bin and welded the lid shut, and are letting a rare talent waste away in his prime because of the pride of billionaires and their MBA toadies who have done nothing but take from the club.

    Hopefully he finds somewhere where his special talent can shine before the end of his career.

    1. *My mistake, thought Mustafi was out until December, but he’s back training. Still we have Mari, Mustafi and Chambers returning from injury and looking unlikely to get many games between them, especially if we switch to a back four.

  15. I see on this thread people backing a player who was holidaying in Turkey while his teammates were grinding their way to an FA cup, and still believe him when he says he’s ‘loyal’ to the club.
    What a strange breed.

    1. mesut was granted permission from the club to go to turkey after being told he wouldn’t be in the squad for the cup final. you make it sound like he skipped out on the club when they needed him. in the words of the american president, that’s disgraceful!

      1. What’s disgraceful is ‘fans’ of a club trying to justify a player opting to go on holidays while his teammates and club were having one of their most important games in recent memory, irrespective of whether he’s directly able to contribute.
        Seeing the mental gymnastics being performed to justify every Ozil’s actions, no wonder Wenger stayed on so long past his sell by date.
        What is it with some Arsenal fans and the cult of personality around gutless players and managers ?

  16. The same people expect the following from the club they ‘support’
    1) Pay a player one of the highest wages in world football
    2) Taylor the team specifically to bring out the best from said player even though that comes at the cost of competitiveness because he’s an ‘artist’
    3) Do not expect productivity in terms of goals or assists from said player even though he plays in the final third because he apparently plays football on an intangible level the fruits of which cannot be quantified by mere mathematics. (Some bloke said he was a ‘pre-assister’)
    4) Give him offs on tough away days because,once again, he’s an ‘artist’ and cannot be asked to do the grunt work.

    And if the club doesn’t do all the above with a smile on their face , they are an empire of evil.

  17. Seeing the answer as simpler. Attributing also to Occam’s Razor:
    ‘The least complex solution is generally the correct one.’

    Come May of 2021 when Ozil’s agreement expires– there is no probable set of circumstances Mesut will be re-signed. If I am Arteta, this season I want those minutes to go to a player who will be a part of the 25-man team the following season.

    Arteta is in a building mode. Ozil’s presence in the team pushes someone down the order. Mooting his and stunting another player’s ongoing value to Arteta’s project.

    Both sides are fulfilling their agreements. Feel that Ozil is wasting a fraction of a finite career by refusing to play elsewhere.

    Seems simple enough to be true.

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