Gunners’ impressive run casts doubts on Oezil’s future at club
>> LONDON: Mesut Oezil has missed Arsenal’s last four matches and may be absent again when the Gunners host Huddersfield Town today.
The 30-year-old playmaker is being treated for a back problem and manager Unai Emery has hinted that he could be passed fit before the game if he comes through sessions with the club’s physiotherapist unscathed.
The German had been on the training ground on Thursday “running and touching the ball”, Emery told a press conference.
But even if Oezil is given the green light to return there are no guarantees that Emery will pick the club’s highest earner, even for the bench.
That despite being a World Cup winner in 2014, and a player with skills few others on the planet can reproduce, especially when it comes to setting up colleagues to score.
Emery, it seems, had already decided he could do without the former Germany international in his comprehensive overhaul of a squad that had forgotten how to win trophies under previous manager Arsene Wenger.
It was the Frenchman who had sanctioned a salary-doubling, £350,000-a-week, three-year contract extension for Oezil just three months before stepping down as manager.
Oezil’s omission from the starting line-up at Bournemouth on Nov 25 was the big reveal to a world that could not fail to notice.
Emery’s explanation could hardly be misinterpreted either: Oezil was named on the bench — and left there for the entire game — at Bournemouth because his manager felt he could not deal with the “physicality and intensity” of the Gunners’ opponents.
Few failed to notice at the time that the reason for his omission carried little weight as Bournemouth are one of the least aggressive in the Premier League.
His absence mattered little as the Gunners’ unbeaten run simply carried on without him.
The Gunners can take that to 21 matches against the Terriers with Oezil’s return to the side likely to be delayed till they play Qarabag in the Europa League next week.