Arsenal: At least Mesut Ozil can finally move forward

Arsenal have made no contractual progress this summer, in fact, they’ve gone backwards. But maybe Mesut Ozil can move forward now.

Arsenal’s summer collapsed pretty quickly, as Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain left and Alexis Sanchez was devastated that he couldn’t leave. Meanwhile. Mesut Ozil was… there. Hangin’ out.

Mesut Ozil has indicated that he wants to stay. That should be that. End of story, sign him up. But as is usually the case with Arsenal, it can never be that easy. Even when someone wants to stay, there are layers of truth and lies to dig through.

Mesut Ozil is not a liar. He has no reason to be. If he says he wants to stay, he wants to stay.

The problem has been where we least expected a problem to ever be again – that Arsena had no money to offer Ozil the raise they wanted to give him. Just like how they had to make gobs of sales in order to free up enough money to sign the few players that they did.

Same goes with contracts. The Gunners have a very strict financial policy courtesy of the (I’m going to censor myself) Stan Kroenke. So when we see numerous players like Mathieu Debuchy, Joel Campbel, Kieran Gibbs and others tied up in contracts while they are never paying, that is money wasted.

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And money that can’t be relocated to players like Ozil, who want to stay, but need a new deal.

So until those dead weight players are sold and their wages cleared up, nothing happens with Ozil. Wenger knew what the deal was when he said he was hoping to have them locked up by Christmas. He knew the financial situation (which is still bizarre) and knew that this was all predicated on selling handfuls of players in the summer.

Now that that has happened, Ozil’s contract can proceed and it wouldn’t be shocking to see him locked in rather quickly. After all, he does want to stay (and apparently he’s one of the few).

It may not mean much, especially given the high levels of criticism that Ozil faces, but the primary concern of this club should be clearing out the players that don’t want to be here and rebuilding around those that do. Ozil wants to be here and he is a World Class talent. Seeing him lock into a new deal can still work the same wonders I felt it would work at the start of the summer.

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Ozil is a leader in his own way for this club. A ton of youth talents have spoken highly of his involvement in their development. That is the mark of someone that is practicing what he preaches – that he wants to be here.

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