Emery delivers clear message to Gunners board over the mystery of high-earning Ozil
AT the time if felt like, if not a triumph, then at least a sign that the forces that were overwhelming Arsenal were in abeyance.
It really was just under a year ago when Arsenal delightedly announced that Mesut Ozil had signed a new three-andhalf-year contract.
After all, they had just lost Alexis Sanchez to Manchester United and though they had salvaged what was effectively a swap deal for Henrikh Mkhitaryan, their hands had been tied as the Chilean had less than six months left on is deal.
Ozil was in the same position and to lose another star of that team, at a time when Arsene Wenger’s grip on the side was clearly loosening and the future seemed uncertain, would have seemed unthinkable.
One year on, you can bet that Raul Sanllehi, the new head of football at Arsenal, must be wishing his predecessor as chief executive, Ivan Gazidis, had actually had actually done what had seemed inconceivable and let Ozil leave. When Labour lost the 2010 General Election, Treasury Secretary Liam Byrne left a note for his successor in the coalition government reading: ‘Sorry: there’s no money.’
Gazidis didn’t quite do that as he left to double his salary and join AC Milan. But, having given in to Ozil’s demands for £350,000 a week and signed Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Mkhiraryan on £250,000 a week, he might as well have done.
Gazidis and Wenger’s last transfer window for the club effectively tied the hands of their successors to the extent that head coach Unai Emery is left talking about taking players on loan this January. In effect they have been
lumbered with a luxury item. Ozil can’t even make the bench at Arsenal, deemed less effective than Eddie Nketiah and three full backs when weighing who could make an impact on the game at West Ham.
When it was put to Emery that the Arsenal could ill afford to have their best-paid players hardly contributing, his response was pointed. ‘I think the players that were here were the players that deserved to be at this match,’ he said.
‘And with them we can win and we can lose.
I think it’s not down to one player for saying we can’t win or lose.
‘I can say Mesut is working this week normally. Like I say, we have won with him, we have lost with him. We continue working with every player as they are all important but today the decision has come for these players.’
Emery’s message to the Arsenal board seems pretty clear: he won’t be using Ozil regularly so they might as well sell him. But no club is likely to take on those huge wages for a 30-year-old. Arsenal might loan him while accepting they will still pay the majority of his salary.
Or they can simply wait two and half years for the contract to run down.
That’s a heavy price for the club to pay for the sake of one moraleboosting announcement designed to plaster over the cracks of the end of the Wenger era.