Arsenal: Offload Mesut Ozil, any way possible

Arsenal are reportedly considering loaning out Mesut Ozil in January. Offloading the German should be a priority for the club, no matter how it is done.

There is a growing awareness of how squads are built — and how to build them poorly and successfully. Teams are getting smarter. The wasted investments in the transfer window are becoming less frequent. The players that are targetted and signed offer financial benefit, not just a football one.

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For Arsenal, however, their squad is still catching up to extreme mismanagement. From their hesitation to renew the contracts of key players to poor investment in sub-par, ageing players, the club is still dealing with the long-term ramifications of those decisions.

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One of the key mistakes the former regime made was re-signing Mesut Ozil to a bumper new deal. Ozil had six months remaining on his first contract. Alexis Sanchez had departed, essentially for nothing, while the club felt that they could not survive the PR disaster of letting their two star players leave in the same season for next to nothing. Ozil knew this. At the negotiating table, he had them over a barrel, and he made it count.

Ozil eventually agreed to a £350,000-a-week deal. It put him firmly in the top ten for the highest-paid players in the world. It was immediately almost double the next highest-paid player in the squad, the newly signed Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang coming in at £200,000 per week. While he was playing superbly at the time and there was an overall agreement that the contract needed to be paid, looking back, it was clearly a mistake.

Arsenal have been paying for that mistake ever since. Their desired investments in every transfer window have been hamstrung greatly by a bloated wage budget, in large part due to Ozil’s contract. Ridding of this contract, then, should be a major priority for the club if they want to progress the squad.

Whatever you may think of Ozil’s quality and talent, which even his fiercest detractors must concede is vast, his production has not nearly matched his price. Arsenal are paying for the German to deliver like an elite attacking midfielder. He may be as skilled as an elite attacking midfielder, but he is most certainly not producing like one, and right now, that is a major issue.

This weekend, it was reported that the Gunners are prepared to offload Ozil this January on loan. How true the reports are is difficult to say, but there is certainly plenty of wisdom to the move. It is widely thought that they tried to sell Ozil this summer but could not find a buyer, and with Unai Emery clearly not seeing Ozil as a part of his plans for the season, it makes sense to offload him, any way possible, and free up £350,000 a week to reinvest.

The modern game requires smart financial decisions. Arsenal have not made them in recent years, and Ozil is a huge example of that. Perhaps, then, it is time for that to change, and it starts with selling the German.