Mesut Ozil could be forgiven for feeling he gets the blame for every problem Arsenal encounter these days.
But when it comes to the Gunners’ failed move for Dani Olmo, it seems the £350,000-a-week misfit may have to accept some responsibility.
As reported by The Mirror, the London giants wanted to bring Olmo to the Emirates during the January transfer window.
But the deal proved impossible as long as Ozil was taking up a big slice of the Arsenal budget. By the time the clock struck midnight on 1 February, the former Barcelona starlet was chugging Red Bull in Leipzig instead.
Ten months later, Olmo’s Spain hosted Ozil’s Germany in Seville with a place in the semi-finals of the UEFA Nations League on the line.
But on a night when Leipzig’s £17 million whirlwind blew away the former World Champions – a 6-0 demolition consigning Germany to their heaviest defeat since the 1930s – Ozil could do no more than watch in horror from home, tweeting furiously about the absence of Jerome Boateng from Joachim Low’s XI.
It was Olmo’s eighth appearance for the Spanish national team. But, in truth, it felt like a coming-of-age performance for an all-action attacking midfielder mentored in La Masia but made in Zagreb.
The 22-year-old may not have produced a goal or assist during one of the greatest nights in Spain’s recent history but he played the ‘Ozil role’ to perfection.
Drifting all over the pitch, spinning on a sixpence and twisting German blood as he went, Olmo was a menace from start to finish.
Seconds before Ferran Torres smashed home the first of his hat-trick goals, an Olmo header clattered off the bar and rebounded into the path of the grateful Manchester City winger.
It was also an ingenious Olmo flick, one of many on the night, that carved apart the German back line en route to goal number four.
Olmo is, in many ways, Ozil repurposed for the modern era – all defence-splitting ability but with added speed and work rate.
And there was a sense of irony in the fact that, as Ozil continues to waste his prime years at London Colney, the man Arsenal wanted as his replacement produced a performance full of vision, guile, relentless energy and endeavour.
Those are four attributes this Arsenal side, one without a goal from open play in six hours, has been lacking for far too long.
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