:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/52545943/630571872.0.jpeg)
There were a few surprises when Arsenal released the lineup for their first game of 2017 this morning, and chief among them was the fact that Mesut Özil wasn’t in the lineup to face Crystal Palace. Generally an unexpected omission like that isn’t great news, and some quickly jumped to the worst conclusions. But don’t worry, because the dot com is here to calm your fears.
We've seen a lot of tweets about this, so to clarify...@MesutOzil1088 misses #AFCvCPFC due to illness pic.twitter.com/mrHON4I0mq
— Arsenal FC (@Arsenal) January 1, 2017
Particularly because of the specific person in question, one assumes this is a legitimate illness, and not the kind of illness that people worldwide are typically suffering from on New Year’s Day. I, for one, am sick with a case of getting home from Party #2 at about 3am and deciding to watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and play Football Manager while drinking more rather than bothering to go to bed. I’m pretty sure Mesut just has a bug.
Anyway, we’ll see how long this keeps him out, hopefully they can just get some fluids in him or something and he’ll be back and ready to go when we face Bournemouth in two days.