Arsenal: If we have to keep Mesut Ozil, might as well need him

Unai Emery claims that Arsenal “need” Mesut Ozil, but honestly, if we have to keep him, then what’s the alternative for a man of his stature?

Arsenal‘s growth has moved far away from needing Mesut Ozil. And with each passing week, they move farther and farther away from needing him. There was a vague hope that he would be sold in the summer, but his contract situation made him impossible to move on.

With the European transfer windows now shut, all doubt has been removed. Ozil is here. He remains. And Unai Emery came out and said something about this little situation as well.

There was so much talk last year about the supposed feud between Ozil and Emery. As the club moved away from needing the likes of Ozil, Emery played the German less and less. When he did give him chances, he was proven right. It just didn’t work, plain and simple.

But now that Ozil is staying, Emery has announced that the club “needs” Ozil to stay. Which might raise a few eyebrows, but having dealt with Arsene Wenger for 22 years, we should all be keyed into what Emery is doing here.

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He’s making the best of a bad situation. If we’re going to keep Ozil—or rather, if we’re going to be forced to keep Ozil—we might as well try to get as much out of him as we possibly can, and that starts with making every effort to make him feel needed.

Which can start with a simple statement like this. Of course we couldn’t sell Ozil, we needed him.

Ozil has yet to touch the pitch for the Gunners this year. After security concerns kept him out early, Liverpool proved an ill-fated match to try to get him involved in, and now Tottenham waits. There’s always a possibility he makes a cameo, but for a player that we “need,” we really don’t need him against Spurs. We have a pretty nice formula that we’re developing, and Ozil doesn’t provide anything that we can’t provide with someone else.

But I get it. If he’s going to be here all year, we can’t have him sitting in a suit with Shkodran Mustafi all season long. We have to find uses for him. He will have his opportunities.

The only question that remains is if he will take those opportunities and actually be needed at some point this year.