Skip to main content

Mikel Arteta doubtful of Ozil rejoining Arsenal squad


 Mikel Arteta revealed that he is unsure whether Mesut Ozil will return to the Arsenal squad in January but has suggested the club will not look to cut short the contracts of players that are not in his plans.


Ozil and Sokratis Papastathopoulos were not registered by the Gunners’ for the first half of the Premier League season and are yet to be included in a matchday squad in any competition.


William Saliba, who joined Arsenal from Saint-Etienne for around £27m in July 2019, has also failed to make a first-team appearance, and Arteta says he expects fringe players to leave in this month’s transfer window.


But when it was suggested Arsenal could terminate the contracts of players such as Ozil and Sokratis – which expire at the end of the season – Arteta said: “You have to respect the players’ contracts.


“What you can do is just try to be open with them, tell them your intentions, the role that they have in the team and why that is. They are entitled to make the decision in their lives because they have a contract here.


“Some would like to move because they are not playing and some would like to stay. That’s something we cannot decide by ourselves.”


Asked whether Ozil, who earns around £350,000 per week and has made it clear he wants to see out his contract at Arsenal, could make a surprise return to his squad in January, Arteta responded: “We will see what happens in the transfer window and we will assess at the end of that.”

Despite stating his belief that the choices he has made are for the benefit of the team, Arteta accepts being denied the chance to take the field takes a mental toll on players.


“When a player doesn’t play, it is really difficult to be happy,” he said. “The profession is to play football. When they are sitting on the bench, they are being supportive of the team but they are not doing what they love in this life.

“At the end of the day, you have to find minutes for everybody, but you need some consistency as well in your line-ups. When we have four competitions it’s much easier, it’s healthier.

“There is another factor, that we have a large squad this season. There are players that don’t play at all. There are players, even in the squad, they know they are not going to have any chance.

“That is tough mentally for them, to maintain that motivation and positivity around the place for a lot of months. That’s a big task.”






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hurricane Hits Texas, One Person Reported Dead

Hurricane Harvey hit Texas as a Category 4 storm on Friday, battering the coast with 130-mph winds and torrential rain. It was the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in more than a decade leaving a massive destruction, loss of electricity, wrecked buildings and has so far killed at least one person. Scroll down to see more pictures of the incident:
Post a Comment
Read more

Togo prime Minister Komi Klassou resigns

Togo’s prime minister and his government have resigned, the West African nation’s presidency said late Friday. President Faure Gnassingbe congratulated prime minister Komi Selom Klassou and his team for their “economic, political and social efforts and the encouraging results despite the health crisis around the world”, a statement on the presidency’s official website said. Togo has been due for a political reshuffle since Gnassingbe was reelected in February for a fourth term in office, but changes were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. The president’s election win, which came after a constitutional change allowing him to run, extended more than a half-century of dynastic rule over the former French colony by the Gnassingbe family. The victory was disputed by the main opposition challenger, who has faced official harassment in the wake of the vote. The president has led the country of eight million people since taking over in 2005 following the death of his father Gnass...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kenyan Law Court dismisses case of man seeking compensation after his wife eloped with another man from hospital

  A lawsuit filed by a man seeking to be compensated by St Mary's Mission Hospital in Kenya for allowing his wife to leave the hospital with another man after giving birth, has been struck out by a law court.    The appellant had sued the St. Mary's Mission hospital at Kakamega law courts in 2020 seeking general damages from the facility on grounds that the hospital had discharged his wife and allowed her to leave with another man. After delivering and at the time of discharge, the wife of the appellant claimed he was the baby's father.   The court of appeal judges Patrick Kiage, Mumbi Ngugi and Francis Tuiyott sitting at the Kisumu Court of Appeal, empathized with the man, but disagreed that he (the appellant) be compensated by the hospital for not detaining his wife.  They upheld the lower court's judgement which added that there's no remedy that lies in the law for such grievances.   Kiage said;   "I agree that if a man takes the woman he loves to t...
Post a Comment
Read more