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Mesut Ozil will be staying with Arsenal next season and intends to see out his contract with the Emirates.
That is even though he has not played a minute of football since the resumption of football, and played no part in Saturday’s FA Cup plans, preferring to spend his time in Turkey instead.
Ozil is the highest paid player at Arsenal on £350,000 a week, and refused, unlike the vast majority of his teammates, to take the 12.5% pay-cut which was negotiated with the squad in response to the Covid-19 crisis.
Whether that soured relations between player and coach Mikel Arteta is hard to say for certain, but he has not featured for the Spaniard since.
Arsenal would dearly like to move him on and get his wages off their books, but, unless there is a radical change in circumstances, it looks like they are stuck with him for the time being, with his agent Erkut Sogut saying “He has a contract, There is no change. He is staying at Arsenal”.
Andy is an exiled English football fan living in Cyprus. He loves all sports but football is his abiding passion, and he still has dreams every now and then about scoring the winning goal in a Wembley Cup Final, even though his playing days are long gone. He follows most major leagues, across Europe at least, and has a favoured team in each. When he’s not watching, listening, reading or downloading podcasts about football, he spend his time worrying about his beloved Arsenal.