The news, speculation and debate surrounding Arsenal and the two star players who will soon be entering the last year of their current contracts has been going on pretty much the whole season and it will go on until they either sign a new deal or transfer away from the club during the summer transfer window.
Arsene Wenger has recently been saying things that suggest he is fairly relaxed about the whole issue and the Frenchman has hinted that he expects both Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil to be Arsenal players next season, but how much can we believe him and ignore all the Arsenal transfer rumours linking the German playmaker and the Chilean striker with other clubs in the Premier League and abroad?
In my opinion, quite a lot. If you look at what has been happening recently there are signs that Ozil and Alexis want to stay at Arsenal. The striker would not be so upset about out struggles in the Premier League and Champions League if he didn’t care and those recent comments about wanting to play for a winning team can just as easily be taken as him wanting Arsenal to be like that then they can about him wanting to go to Chelsea or another club. In comments on the Arsenal website this week the boss suggested exactly this.
He said, “I believe that he basically wants to stay at the club, and it’s down to finding an agreement with his agent.
“The players have to first see whether they are happy at the club. Most of the time it’s down to finding an agreement and the finances are involved in it, yes.”
The situation with Ozil is even more clear as the Germany international has himself spoke about being happy at Arsenal and in another Arsenal.com report Wenger has revealed that the latest Champions League exit really hit him hard, which it would not have done if he did not care.
The Frenchman said, “He is very ambitious and he wants to win the Champions League. He’s come out many times saying that. If you look at the two games and take the first 45 minutes of the two games, we were qualified but then went out in such an emphatic way.
“It was difficult to take for everybody and maybe even more for him because it’s a big part of his ambition.
“He cares. What I wanted to say in that is that people often reproach him by saying that he doesn’t care because of his style of play, but he cares much more than people think he does.”
You might say that all this is just talk and may not mean a thing, but if you look at the effort put in by both players and the whole team in the last two games it supports the comments and tells me that Arsenal will still have Ozil and Alexis in the side next year.
Bob.