I find it all very depressing. And I agree the lack of transparency from the club is making it worse. And to head off the punching of any strawmen, no I don't think he's the same player he was --- we've seen some physical decline. But the idea that he's not even good enough on pure football grounds to make the roster seems farfetched.
What are they supposed to tell the public? "He's making 20 mil per year which is too costly for us in these times and we cant do anything against him wanting to sit his contact out"? They cant announce this for obvious reasons
With Ozil in the final year of his contract, Arsenal need to buy him out and let him go elsewhere now. Without a clean separation this will fester with fans and possibly the team.
Exactly - that is just not believable seeing how good he was up until March. He could easily do a job in midfield, even if not first choice. And Per has come out and said he has been training well. Also - i get dropping someone to stamp your mark on the side - like Arteta did with Douzy. That has happened in international football many times where very good players have been booted in order to refresh the dressing room and let other players lead. But in club football, you would at least keep Ozil in your roster?
They have to be careful not to breach his contract. it's OK to say a player is not part of the managers plans because "vague reasons", but you can't be seen to be constructively breaching the employment contract in order to force the player out
Ozil has routinely been one of our worst outfield players almost since the moment he signed that new contract. Even when people point to his appearances pre-lockdown, he was doing absolutely nothing. He was like an advanced Elneny, receiving the ball in the opponents half and passing it backwards and sideways. At the end of the day we couldn't sell all the dead weight we wanted to, and were above the foreign player limit, so 2 players had to be cut. You don't see Sokratis crying about it on social media. Something no Arsenal fans defending Ozil want to get into is who would you drop, if you are going to include Ozil? I don't like Cedric, and we shouldn't have bought him, but we just signed him and he is our official backup RB so he will be included. Ozil may jog up and down the field covering a lot of distance, but he doesn't actually put in a defensive shift on par with what everyone else does under Arteta. He also doesn't offer enough going forward for the team to afford to carry him for his attacking contribution. Leaving him and Sokratis is not a controversial decision. If you told me in March, just as we were heading into lockdown, that we would need to leave out 2 foreign players because our summer transfer business put us over the limit, I'd have had Ozil and Sokratis as the top 2 choices. Ozil's PR team is trying to make it controversial, and too many people are buying into their bs. His Uighur comments were made in early December, and he was still playing until our final game before lockdown.
The data does support this. 1 goal and 2 assists in 1400 minutes in the league. In the time he played for Arteta he has 1 goal and 1 assist in 10 games. Willock has 1 goal and 1 assist in 800 minutes. Why on earth would we be dropping someone else from the squad to fit in Ozil?
Alternatively, I would have looked at injured players. Mari and Mustafi have just returned to training. If they are not expected to be game ready until mid November, I might have considered leaving them off list until the winter window.q
We went into all this stuff at the time. I agree his assists are not good, but he was still our leading chance creator by some distance. The problem is we are simply not good in attack. And especially his defensive data was high quality based on league averages.
At the rate we lose defenders to injury, I'd definitely want both registered - and both are already back in training. We are down to Luiz, Gabriel, and Saliba (who is deemed not ready for this level) at CB. Yet people will judge Ozil's past performances favorably because of his assists. This team cannot afford to carry deadweight like Ozil. Him and Sokratis are the last 2 players we would want to register, and were rightfully left off as we ran out of space. Yes the team is desperately in need of creativity, but we need players who can fit into Arteta's strategy, or are so good, that its worth accommodating them. Ozil is not that guy. The fact that he is more willing to get paid just to train, rather than take a pay cut and move, or go out on loan with us covering the balance of his wages, tells you how much competitive drive the guy has.
I tend to agree that the real problem is we have absolutely screwed up the balance of the squad. Positions should be covered via the under 21 players or homegrown, but instead, we are carrying a whole bunch of mediocre foreign defenders Short version - we suck
We definitely managed our squad numbers poorly, but I guess with COVID, no one did a good job selling players. We lost a spot going from Emi to Runarsson. Cedric was a poor choice of a backup RB. Should have prioritized someone home grown or young enough to not take up a foreign player spot. It wasn't such an urgent need in January that we had to waste money on a player who wasn't great even by Southampton's standards, and was going to be out of contract this summer anyway, but we did it, so he has to be in the squad.
A simple solution to the center back depth problem would be register Sokratis instead of whichever of Mari or Mustafi are furthest from fit.
Having thought about this I'm not sure where else they could've gone with the messaging once they made a determination he wouldn't be a factor in the team's future. Arsenal's handling of the affair hasn't been great but I wasn't pleased with Ozil's recent comments about the club's lack of loyalty. It's been clear for a while now the club is heading in a different direction on the pitch and they're under no obligation to try to fit a square peg into a round hole just out of loyalty. They would gladly have helped him move on but he opted to stay of his own volition. That's his choice, but if he chooses to stay just for the money then he can't gripe about the team choosing to sit him despite the money.
Sokratis, like Ozil, doesn't fit the system. I think Mustafi and Mari are already back in training. Registering Sokratis would have been a mistake, unless their timelines to return was late November.
I agree it is a bit depressing and I would add unseemly for the club that blabs about high ethical standards and victoria concordia crescit, blah, blah, blah. No one in their right mind is buying this is down to football reasons when we see the quality of some of our players. If this is not a disciplinary problem, and Arteta has said as much (for the "no one is above the club" muppets), then I would want Arsenal to use every resource available to help us win games. If we're to believe this somehow is about football and Ozil is not better than Joe Willock, then just release him instead of humiliating him and carrying on this soap opera we're all very tired of. Arteta is now the Manager and not just the head coach. And a lot of the responsibility of the Manager of Arsenal Football Club is to manage the limited "self sustaining" resources of the club - we are not f&cking Manchester City and cannot afford to just blow up assets and buy our way out of the mess. And I don't fault Arteta for most of the financial mess we are currently in, but now this Ozil, Torreira, Guendouzi, Willian/Pepe, Saliba etc. business is a bit of a red flag for me as we need to get the most out of buying and selling to start competing.