Arsenal: Martin Keown isn’t the bad guy in Mesut Ozil situation

Mesut Ozil’s agent has lashed out at former Arsenal man Martin Keown, but the agent doesn’t seem to be seeing both sides of this.

In case you haven’t seen, Mesut Ozil‘s agent spoke to Goal.com and went on a fiery tirade against Martin Keown for his comments about Ozil and the situation regarding Ozil’s sudden back injury and how he would be missing for the rest of the Arsenal season.

Keown wasn’t alone in his criticism of Ozil. I was right there with him, claiming that Ozil had higher priorities. Not that that is inherently bad, but the concept was unsettling, to say the least.

The problem wasn’t just that he missed the match against Burnley (again). It was also how little he managed to do against Atletico Madrid. It was all the times this season a mysterious and unexplained “illness” claimed him from the team.

Related Story: 5 Things Learned Against Leicester City

The match at Turf Moor, for instance, when even Arsene Wenger was surprised to find the German maestro missing the morning of the match.

Now, all of a sudden, Ozil’s agent is losing his mind over how someone can be so disrespectful to Ozil and, honestly, I feel as though I was responsible for reassessing my take on the Ozil situation as well.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 standout players from 1-0 victory over Everton
• 3 positives & negatives from Goodison Park victory
• Arsenal vs PSV preview: Prediction, team news & lineups
• 3 talking points from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• Mikel Arteta provides Gabriel Martinelli injury update after Everton win

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought this was completely wrong. Keown isn’t the bad guy here, nor was the massive speculation all that misplaced. And the reasoning is simple.

To all of a sudden hear that Ozil has been sporting a back injury all year is troubling. Absolutely it is. But if that is the case, why hasn’t it been made clear earlier? We knew long ago that Laurent Koscielny has been nursing achilles injuries all year and guess what? There was massive sympathy. Even in criticisms, we accepted that he was in pain and probably should have a sit down to recover.

For Ozil, we were told nothing. Only “illnesses,” some of which seemed to catch Wenger off guard. And then all of a sudden he’s been hurt all year?

I’m not saying it isn’t true, but where was this guy months ago? Now he’s springing out of the woodwork to defend his client, which is great and all, but he’s doing so with a “you all should have known better” spiel, but how could we have known better?

I have long weeded out my criticism of Ozil’s body language, because I’ve accepted that’s just who he is, but when he is constantly missing games with no explanation, it kind of comes back up again and we start to think about what is really going on.

Next: Arsenal vs Leicester City Player Ratings

No one doubts that he loves the club. He signed a new deal where he’s making more money than any Arsenal player ever, so that’s nice. But we aren’t so sold that we are going to blindly trust him. Keown was harsh, but he said what so many of us were thinking. And if Ozil’s agent wants to avoid that situation, then he needs to get out in front of such problems in the future rather than waiting for the response and then lashing out.