Arsenal: Henrikh Mkhitaryan ducking under Mesut Ozil shield

Henrikh Mkhitaryan, at £200,000-a-week, is a drain on Arsenal’s resources. The midfielder, however, is avoiding flack because of the obsession with Mesut Ozil and his £350,000-a-week.

Mesut Ozil is the current topic of conversation among Arsenal fans. His battle with head coach Unai Emery is a major crux at the club, with a seeming power struggle on the horizon between star player and newly appointed but increasingly unpopular manager.

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The Ozil argument surrounds his earnings. The Gunners had to shell out £350,000-a-week last January to keep the German at the club, preventing him from walking out the door for nothing six months later. Since that time, Ozil has rarely justified such exhaustive wages and Emery has been more than willing to drop him from the team.

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Obviously, having the highest-paid player in the squad and the eighth-highest-paid player in the world sitting on your bench — and that is when he is even able to make the matchday squad — is far from ideal. And the situation has seen Ozil rightfully labelled as a major drain of resources, one that must be resolved this summer, either by reinstating into the team or trying to offload him and his wages on the cheap.

But Ozil is far from the only drain on resources that Arsenal should be looking to offload this summer. In fact, there is another who plays almost exactly the same position as the German and also signed a bumper deal last January who is deserving of more flack that he is currently receiving. Henrikh Mkhitaryan is not delivering on the reported £200,000-a-week that the Gunners are paying him, and that, like the Ozil conundrum, is a problem.

The Armenian returned from injury in a bright performance last weekend against Huddersfield Town. He then followed that up with a rather anonymous showing in Thursday night’s disastrous 1-0 defeat to BATE Borisov. Sadly, it has been the latter displays that have been the norm this season.

And like with Ozil, the issue for Mkhitaryan is expectation. If he was paid like a rotational attacker who is asked to come into the team every now and then and deliver in a bit-part role, then I am sure most would be quite happy with his production this past year — Mkhitaryan has two fewer goals and assists than Alex Iwobi in the Premier League this season and roughly the same minutes per goal or assist. But he isn’t. Mkhitaryan is the third-highest-paid player in the squad behind Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Ploughing that kind of resource into a mediocre player severely hurts the rest of the team. Arsenal only have so much money to spend. If they are wasting over half a million per week and approximately 8% of their wage bill on two players that are either worthy on the bench or sat on the bench, then that is an absolute travesty in squad management. It is inevitable that other positions will suffer as a consequence.

Ozil is a major resource problem that needs to be solved, yes. But so is Mkhitaryan, and no one seems to be talking about it. He is protected by the obsession with Ozil.