Shkodran Mustafi’s father denies that they’re planning to terminate his contract early, despite the reports over the last 24 hours.

Football.London reported on Monday that Shkodran Mustafi was in talks with Arsenal over ending his contract early. They claimed he wants to leave the club amid interest from Italy, including Lazio.

However, Chris Wheatley now reports that Mustafi’s father is denying the rumours. He says: “We have a contract with Arsenal until 30th June 2021. There are no plans to terminate his contract right now.”

This is rather surprising, as the likely result is that Mustafi ends up sitting around not playing football for the next six months.

Arsenal are bringing in Martin Odegaard from Real Madrid, on top of Mat Ryan from Brighton, adding two non-homegrown players to a Europa League squad that was already full – even after all of this window’s outgoings.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Mesut Özil leaving didn’t change anything, as they weren’t in the squad anyway, whilst Sead Kolasinac was replaced by Gabriel Martinelli. Martinelli was left out of the group-stage squad due to his injury.

As things stand, they’ll have to leave two players out for the two new additions, and you’d have to imagine Mustafi is top of the list along with Runar Alex Runarsson.

It’s worth mentioning that the situation is slightly less urgent in the Premier League squad. Due to the differing rulebook in the competition, Martinelli doesn’t have to be registered in the main squad, and he can join the u21 list instead.

Still, Arsenal need to offload one player to have room for Odegaard in the Premier League squad.

It’s not impossible Arsenal choose to loan Runarsson, leave Mustafi out of the Europa League squad but include him in the Premier League squad. But obviously, it would be better if he left to avoid the problem completely.