Martin Keown has claimed that he told Unai Emery to cut ties with Mesut Ozil previously, and advise new Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta to do the same.
The German midfielder is yet to feature since the Premier League resumed last week, despite playing twice already.
Ozil’s future is now being questioned once again, with him previously being labelled as lazy, and former Arsenal defender Keown now claims that he has been telling managers to offload the former Real Madrid star for two years.
“The Ozil situation when Emery took the job, I felt at that time the best thing he could have done is to take Ozil away and sell him at that point,” former Gunners defender Keown told talkSPORT.
“In fact, I advised him to do that at the time.
“What we have seen with Ozil – for one reason or another, and everyone feels you’re picking on him – he’s a player that isn’t part of the future at Arsenal.
“They need to cut their losses and let Ozil go, otherwise the other players see the bad habits that he may have.
“I’m assuming he hasn’t trained well enough and really given it everything, and the manager now doesn’t want to invest any more time in him.
“But when you have someone around the edges of a football club like that, with all of those impressionable young men, it’s time for change.
“Arteta is part of that change and part of that new freshness, but if you don’t make the right decisions then you are no longer a part of that, you are a part of the past.”
The Spanish boss has previously insisted that players must show their intention to play on the training ground when telling Arsenal FC why Ainsley Maitland-Niles had found himself out of favour, and it wouldn’t be a shock to hear that this reasoning was used for Ozil’s exclusion either.
Is Ozil still a key player for Arsenal? Will he need to show more in training to get back into the manager’s plans?
Patrick
