One thing was instantly clear from media reports around Europe this morning – Arsenal are doing all they can to find a new home for Mesut Ozil.

emery ozil
Arsenal’s German midfielder Mesut Ozil (L) shakes hands with Arsenal’s Spanish head coach Unai Emery (R) after being substituted during the English Premier League football match between Arsenal and Leicester City at the Emirates Stadium in London on October 22, 2018. (Photo by Glyn KIRK / IKIMAGES / AFP)

Whether the club briefed reporters or they all just decided to go with the same version of the same story on the same day, we will never know for sure, but one thought was inescapable as I read through the world’s press on Wednesday morning – Arsenal are doing all they can to get rid of Mesut Ozil.

Arsenal have been shopping Ozil around Europe and China trying to find a club who can afford his wages. They’ve offered him to Inter Milan, again, but the Italians are not interested because of the obscene amount of money Ivan Gazidis okayed to stop Ozil leaving on a free.

Even Arsene Wenger was said to be reluctant to pay that sort of cash to the player.

daily express arsene wenger ozil wages
Daily Express

Fans, meanwhile, are left wondering why their best creative player is being slowly destroyed by the club after a summer that saw his entire country turn on him.

Ozil missed out, again, at the weekend. This time he’s supposedly sick but it’s hard not to think that Unai Emery is trying to do what he failed to manage at PSG.

If you speak to most Arsenal fans, they don’t want the club to sell Mesut Ozil. They want to play him.

That doesn’t seem like something that will happen any time soon so I guess we just get used to dealing with all these rumours which are going to be non-stop until Ozil finally leaves the club.

With just 102 minutes to his name since Boxing Day, the club are paying Ozil an obscene amount of money to sit around and do nothing. That’s not something they can sustain.

Despite that, he’s still our most creative player.

Unless something is revealed that shows Ozil is behaving poorly behind the scenes, we will look back at the way he has been treated and wonder just what, exactly, was it all supposed to achieve?