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Most of the club’s fans will greet the news with disbelief but Mesut Ozil was paid a £8 million loyalty bonus at the end of September.
That is despite the fact that the Gunners would dearly love to terminate his contract.
The 31-year old is the club’s highest earner on £350,000 but has not featured for the club since lockdown after falling completely out of favour until Mikel Arteta. He was not included in their Europa League squad announced last week, and there is a high probability that he will never play for the club again.
Yet despite this, the club were forced to pay him the bonus because that was part of the lucrative deal he signed with the club in 2018.
There is some compensation though for the accountants at the Emirates. By not playing the former German World Cup winner, they are saving on various appearance-related bonuses which were also written into his contract.
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.