‘Behind his back’: Darren Bent shares what Arsenal players will be saying about Ozil

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Darren Bent has told TalkSport (21/10/20 at 10:55 am) that there could be some Arsenal players who will talk about Mesut Ozil ‘behind his back’ after he was snubbed by Mikel Arteta.

But the former striker feels the majority of his teammates will tell the left-footed playmaker that he has to ‘stick with it’ after he was left out of Arsenal’s 25-man Premier League squad.

In recent years, Arsenal’s stagnation has been pretty rapid, but Ozil’s fall has hit rock-bottom at a quicker speed and it’s quite clear it’s now at an end.

Former Tottenham man, Bent, who is a boyhood Arsenal fan, waded in on the Ozil situation and was asked how his teammates will react to his omission.

“You are going to get the ones that may be behind his back that might talk about him,” Bent told TalkSport. “But most of the time, people will say ‘you have just got to stick with it’.

“I don’t think there will be bitterness toward him or certainly not towards his face. They see in training how good Mesut Ozil is and they’ll understand that the manager just doesn’t want him in his team, so nothing really they can do.

“He looks like a great guy and he doesn’t look like someone who has all that money and is arrogant. He seems like a very good guy. His teammates will like him and support him.

“It could be a number of things [as to why he’s been snubbed]. It might not even be Arteta. It could be someone upstairs saying ‘he might have a bonus, so we aren’t going to play him and we’ll leave him out of it’ – It’s a strange one that you don’t even include him in your squad.”

During a period where Arsenal have lacked a cutting edge and something off-the-cuff in the middle of the park, it’s a huge risk by Arteta to part ways with the German playmaker in such a ruthless fashion.

Just like a certain Unai Emery, he will be hoping this doesn’t come back to bite him in the back.

Arteta has made more progression and there seems to be more unity under him than the previous manager, but as has been proven with the Ozil decision, this can be a very ruthless industry and things can change in an instance.