Mesut Ozil – Being assessed ahead of [insert opponent] following back soreness.
It is becoming a simple Ctrl C + Ctrl V task for Arsenal’s media team, and one that has featured on their website for team news against Norwich, Wolves, Leicester, Tottenham, and most recently for Wednesday’s match against Liverpool.
This persistent back problem is the reported reason why he has missed all of Arsenal’s matches in July, and having also been absent for their four matches in June you have to go back to 7 March against West Ham for the German’s last appearance.
It is not the first instance where Ozil has suffered from back issues either. In May 2018 he missed the end of that season with the same problem, while some seven months later he was out for three league matches as rumours did the rounds suggesting hours upon hours of playing Fortnite could be to blame.
And with around a fortnight to go of Arsenal’s current campaign, head coach Mikel Arteta is refusing to elaborate on exactly when Ozil will next feature, although the midfielder made a clear statement of his own on the eve of the Liverpool clash.
“I A M R E A D Y,” he declared on Twitter, followed by football emoji, boom (pow? bang?) emoji, and then of course “#M1Ö #YaGunnersYa #teamtraining”.
In three spaced-out words Ozil poured water on this repetitive team news disorder, and it means someone must be wrong. There is either soreness or no soreness. So is Ozil unaware of his own unreadiness, or are Arsenal covering a deeper-lying problem?
There will persistently be speculation that the latter is the case while a man who earns £350,000-a-week in wages only sometimes sits in the stands, sometimes using an umbrella to block the sun.
I A M R E A D Y
???? #M1Ö #YaGunnersYa #teamtraining pic.twitter.com/uVbrjwQjJF
— Mesut Özil (@MesutOzil1088) July 14, 2020
Said speculation only intensifies when Arteta – time after time – delivers a short, sharp statement when asked about Ozil, with Matteo Guendouzi often thrown into the same question.
“With Mesut the situation is still the same as it was,” said Arteta, speaking ahead of the Liverpool match, on whether Ozil will play again this season.
When pushed again a few questions later, his response was similar: “I don’t know. At the moment, the situation remains the same. We will see if that changes.”
Before Tottenham? “No, no updates sorry.” Before Leicester? “Still, the situation is as it was before.” Before Wolves? “It’s still to be decided.” And so on…
Much like the website team news, it’s Groundhog Day when Arteta talks about Ozil, and there is every reason to believe nothing will change until the end of the campaign.
And so, with a year remaining on his Arsenal contract the club may search for potential interested parties this summer, but who would take an expensive gamble on a 31-year-old with back problems in this current climate?
Moves to Inter and Fenerbahce have been touted in the past but, as i reported in February, Ozil is determined to see out his contract at Arsenal.
That means another 12 months of Ozil on the bench – if at all. Another year of questions for Arteta. One more campaign of copying and pasting for the website team. Football emoji. Boom emoji. Ya. Gunners. Ya.
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