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Mesut Ozil contract was the cheapest option, says Arsene Wenger
It is indicative of where English football finds itself in 2018 that Arsène Wenger, the single biggest bulwark against the game’s 21st century financial explosion, should declare Mesut Özil’s new £350,000-per-week contract Arsenal’s “cheapest option” in regards to a playmaker.
These are different times at Arsenal, or at least the latest attempt at change, following a month in which they have twice broken through the top end of their pay structure while selling their three leading goalscorers from last season, all to clubs within the top eight of the Premier League.
At the club where nothing ever seemed to change, January 2018 felt like a radical departure for Arsenal, and surely the first signs of the new hierarchy exerting its control. They face Everton at the Emirates on Saturday, an early return for Theo Walcott after his move to Goodison Park and one unlikely to feature the club’s record new signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who is currently a doubt with illness. There was no introductory press conference for the £56 million man because Arsenal no longer do that, and given their recent record in the transfer market one can see why the responsibility has been handed over to Sven Mislintat, the new chief scout and also, starting this month, the new director of football Raul Sanllehi.
The re-signing of Özil has been presented by the club as something that Arsenal fans should feel thoroughly grateful about, a strange assumption to make given that he is being paid twice as much to do so as any player in their history. Of course, Özil, even at 29, is a player whom Arsenal would rather not have lost but, having found themselves thoroughly out-manoeuvred by his stubbornness and Alexis Sánchez’s departure, ended up paying far too much to stay.
Asked whether it might mean that a few of his other big names could review their own financial situation, Wenger tried to explain the thinking behind the new decision. “When you let a player go you have to buy somebody of the same calibre and if you add the wages needed it will be similar,” he said. “On top of that we have to pay a transfer. So overall I think Mesut for us was the cheapest option. On the other side all of our players are well paid. Very well paid. To feel sorry for them – I’m not sure that it’s the most objective assessment.”
He called upon Özil to be “the technical leader” of the new post-Sánchez Arsenal team, which is the least one could expect under the terms of his new contract. As for the arrival of Aubameyang, Wenger could offer no consolation to last summer’s record signing Alexandre Lacazette other than to say that they are in a competitive world and over the course of the remainder of the season he will have to call upon more than one striker. He said that Aubameyang was a player whom he had admired for some time and was not worried about his reputation for poor discipline.
“I don’t think that is a problem,” Wenger said. “He [Aubameyang] spent four years in Germany and has had some problems in the last year that were linked with the fact that maybe his transfer did not work in the summer and he did not have the same commitment as he had before. I am quite confident that this will be a new challenge for him and overall his behaviour will be fine. I know him from France – he played for St Etienne and Bastia – and usually his behaviour was never a problem. He is a professional guy.”
It was intriguing to hear that he acquiesced to Olivier Giroud joining Chelsea, a rival for one of the top four places and only eight points better off than Arsenal currently, because the player and his wife Jennifer have just had a third child and wanted to stay in London. It was a decision, Wenger admitted, that owed more to the club’s admiration for the player and they will be well aware that it could come back to haunt them.
As for the defender who never arrived, despite attempts to sign one, Wenger simply said that situation would be improved by scoring more goals. They have eight fewer than they did at this stage of last season, and eight fewer points, and the Arsenal manager repeated his point about the deficit in goalscoring enough times to tell you that it is on his mind. “That’s our DNA, we are an attacking team,” he said. “The danger is when you are an attacking team that you don’t score and then of course you create your own problems.”
It became clear that Wenger is not worrying as much as others about his defence, shaky once again in the defeat to Swansea. This month, he has lost Sánchez, Walcott, Giroud and Francis Coquelin as well as Jeff Reine-Adelaide on loan, against the signings of Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. At one point Wenger even fretted that the squad might be low on numbers. Alex Song, 30, and out of contract has been permitted to train at London Colney in the afternoons to stay in shape, and Wenger said there was no prospect of him re-joining on a short-term basis. He was quite sure about that.