Özil: My future isn’t Wenger-dependent

There are two big “will he won’t he” stories at Arsenal right now, of course - Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Özil. While Alexis’ path to a decision seems a little more...tumultuous, or at the very least widely speculated on, we have had very little indication from Özil, the club, or anyone involved with the situation what his leanings might be. Today, though, we got a hint of what’s involved in his thought process.

Speaking to German newspaper Bild, Özil said

“Everything is open,” he said. “We had talks with Arsenal. Right now I’m concentrating on the current season. Arsene Wenger was one of the main reasons I joined Arsenal. But I know that sometimes things go very fast in football and that you can never plan something. This is why it would be wrong to say that my future depends on my coach.”

So there’s that. The professional sentence parsers in the crowd may fixate on the past tense of that first sentence - “we had talks”, but that’s likely not a sign that said talks ended unsuccessfully. It’s probably more of a “we had a couple chats and agreed to hold off till summer” type thing.

Mesut Özil is a key to Arsenal’s success, and his recent run of poor form isn’t good for himself or the club. I really hope he re-signs, and the fact that, at least according to this, Arsene Wenger’s future doesn’t really play into Özil’s decision gives me some hope that he might.