Mesut Ozil has reportedly been dropped from Arsenal’s 25-man Premier League squad submitted on Tuesday.
The writing was already on the wall for Ozil, 32, after he was axed from Mikel Arteta’s UEFA Europa League squad last week.
And Arteta has reportedly now made the same decision on the domestic front, meaning Ozil will be consigned to the sidelines until January at least.
The former Real Madrid star has not kicked a ball in competitive action for Arsenal since play resumed after the Covid-19 break in March, despite being the Gunners’ highest earner on £350,000 a week.
He reportedly picked up an £8 million loyalty bonus at the end of September as part of the deal which runs until next summer, but has never seemed further from Arteta’s plans despite initially getting a run in the team when the Spaniard took over from Unai Emery last December.
Observers have pointed to Ozil being ill-suited to the high-intensity pressing game that Arteta is attempting to install at the club, despite the faded star once being one of the preeminent playmakers of his generation, helping Germany to the World Cup in 2014 before quitting the national team in a bitter racism row after the failure in Russia four years later.
Ozil, who joined Arsenal from Real Madrid in 2013, was linked to a potential exit from the Emirates this summer but insisted he will stay and fight for his place.
His astronomical wages that he commands would also be a barrier to any club aiming to secure his services before he potentially leaves as a free agent in the summer of 2021.
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