Arsenal: Paying Mesut Ozil to leave says everything

Arsenal are finally talking about selling Mesut Ozil, and even if we have to buy his sale (that’s a thing), it will always be worth it.

As it stands, Arsenal are apparently having a hard time moving Mesut Ozil out of the club. After seeing Chelsea ditch Alvaro Morata and get £58m in return, I wonder how we can’t scratch together some kind of fee, but hey, such is life.

There have been a few positive signs lately, however, with Fenerbahce entering into the fold with some creative ideas to land Ozil without having to destroy their entire wage structure until 2034.

Ozil currently makes £13.5m a year at Arsenal. Which is so stupid to think about. But Fenerbahce are apparently willing to eat £8.5m of that to land the German’s services, if the Gunners will pay the remaining £5m, which equates to wages just under £100,000 a week.

Seeing as how Mesut Ozil is currently making £350,000 a week and doing nothing with it, taking more away from the club than he’s giving, the idea of paying him £100,000 just to leave the club sounds better to me than most signings have sounded (yeah, Wilfried Zaha).

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I’m pretty tunnel-visioned when it comes to following Arsenal, but as far as I know, it’s not exactly a regular thing to pay someone who isn’t on the club. Yet here I am, celebrating the idea, solely because I want him to go somewhere else.

It sounds more malicious than it is, though. I hold nothing against Ozil other than his unwillingness to leave. He doesn’t fit in and he is soaking up a crap ton of money to sit on the bench and do nothing. And that’s on a good day, some days he doesn’t even make it to the bench.

Yet there are still people out there who will defend Ozil’s prolonged stay at the club. But how can you when you have deals floating about that involve the Gunners paying to let Ozil leave the club? That doesn’t happen to valuable assets on the club.

And again, that’s no an indictment of Ozil’s abilities, merely the clear fact that he does not fit in at the club, and I’d argue that he never did. Even his 19 assist season was primarily achieved in the first half, with a massive downturn coming after that.

He’s a luxury player on a transitioning team, and you don’t have to be a genius to know that this is not a recipe for success, nor will it ever be.