Martin Keown urged Arsenal attacking midfielder Mesut Ozil on talkSPORT (11:11am, October 9, 2020) to leave the club.
The Arsenal legend believes that the Gunners and Ozil should part company now and come to a mutual agreement over his contract situation.
The 31-year-old is out of contract at the Gunners at the end of the season, with The Daily Mail claiming that the Premier League club want to hold talks with him over mutually terminating his contract.
According to the report, the former Real Madrid attacking midfielder is on £350,000-a-week at the North London club.
Keown said about Ozil on talkSPORT (11:11am, October 9, 2020): “At the end of the day, I am judging what he does on the pitch. I was never really convinced towards the end of the game, certainly that Europa League final.
“I just felt that he disappeared in an Arsenal shirt. He didn’t come up fighting, and I felt he really let himself down and the club down.
“I have not seen him really get back to the early form he showed under Arsene Wenger. Time has come to go, and if you think about the money that he is costing, he is costing Arsenal £18 million a year.”
Stay or leave?
Ozil has not played for Arsenal since March and has also been left out of the Europa League squad by manager Mikel Arteta.
It is hard to see the German play regular first-team football anytime soon, and for the club, it would make sense to try to come to an arrangement over his contract.
However, the 31-year-old is a very good and experienced player who can be brilliant on his day, and perhaps Arsenal and Arteta should look at the attacking midfielder’s situation one last time.
True, Ozil may not fit into Arteta’s current system, but he would be a good option to have on the substitutes’ bench.
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