Arsenal and Mesut Ozil: So you’re saying there’s a chance

Arsenal have to, have to, have to find a buyer for Mesut Ozil if they truly want to move forward, and Fenerbahce may be ready to answer the call.

What have I been saying all summer (and even before)? Arsenal‘s No. 1 priority this summer has to be finding a buyer for Mesut Ozil. I don’t care what you have to forfeit to get him off the team, you don’t ask questions, you accept, you move on.

According to rumors, Fenerbahce are determined to land the services of the best No. 10 in the world, but it might involve a combination of any of the following: a loan move, wage renegotiation, wage absorption, begging, finding sponsors, pleading, ritual sacrifice, long walks on the beach.

That same rumor pegs the deal as “50-51%” likely to go through. It’s a bit of a weird prediction, but anything that involves Mesut Ozil leaving has me immediately 100-101% interested, and that’s why I’m sitting here at 2AM (EST) writing about why we should all of a sudden put completely credence in an unbacked report out of Turkey.

There is one truth that I think the majority of fans can agree on, and that’s that Mesut Ozil does not fit in at the club anymore. But I take it one step further, as I have said—that the club can’t fully move on until Ozil is gone.

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As long as he is at the club, eating those wages, eating that spot at the bench, being the presence that he is, being the (perhaps involuntary) sideshow that he becomes, the club will never be in the “next era.” They will be stuck in the shadow of the Wenger era.

All last year Ozil failed. And maybe that was at literally no fault of his. Maybe it had everything to do with the situation he was in. That doesn’t matter. I’m not here to argue his talent levels, nor will I ever. I’m here to argue what is best for the club.

And he isn’t.

Fenerbahce, and the Turkish league in general, have long been a “final resting place” that Ozil has spoken freely about. Meaning that, for as determined as he is to stay at the Emirates, if anywhere were to tempt him, maybe it would be the league he always wanted to go to, where he can actually find consistent minutes.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but 50-51% chances might as well be 5% chances, it doesn’t matter. Any chance that we have found a solution to the Ozil problem is something I’ll lap up.