Arsene Wenger has given another update on Mesut Ozil’s potential new contract with Arsenal and admits that while a deal is too far away for him to be optimistic, it’ll hopefully happen ‘soon’.
While of course Wenger’s comments regarding Ozil signing a new deal with the Gunners could just be standard answers fed to him by Arsenal’s media team, if you compare them with the boss’ answers regarding Alexis Sanchez staying earlier in the season, you can definitely see a difference.
From the beginning, Wenger was very neutral about Alexis and Ozil potentially leaving Arsenal, although we always got the feeling his comments were about Alexis rather than Ozil because of the City interest.
“This summer, first of all, they will stay at the club and hopefully we can extend their contracts,” he said back in June 2017.
The Frenchman took one day at a time and gave a similar response every time he was asked: the Chilean (and Ozil) would be staying at the club for the time being and the Gunners hoped to tie them down for longer.
He never seemed certain and that’s because he wasn’t.
“We have to make a choice between efficiency on the field and financial interest. I prioritise the fact he will be useful on the sporting side,” Wenger said in August about Alexis.
After the summer, which ended with Arsenal actually accepting a £60m bid for the 29-year-old from Manchester City, Wenger started to lean towards Alexis being sold in January. He said it was a possibility.
“In our situation, we have envisaged every solution. It is possible,” he admitted in October.
Obviously, we know what happened next.
Now that Alexis is no longer part of the equation, Wenger seems reasonably confident that Ozil will sign a new deal ‘soon’. He’s not being nearly as vague and his answers seem a little less tense than when he was questioned about Alexis’ future.
As always, we could be reading into this too much and getting our hopes up over nothing but considering everything, including Ozil’s recent activity on social media, it’s difficult not to.