Don’t normally write about football stories on here too often, but this is such a weird flex from Mesut Ozil that I felt that it couldn’t be avoided.

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For those of you who have been following football, you’ll know that despite being Arsenal’s highest paid player by some distance – I think he’s on £350,000 a week or something ridiculous – Mesut Ozil hasn’t played for the team since the early days of Mikel Arteta’s managerial reign for reasons that haven’t been disclosed but are rumoured to be related to attitude problems, lack of match fitness/inability to follow Arteta’s instructions and the fact that he could be addicted to Fortnite.

Anyway, this is a culmination of the last couple of years of his time at Arsenal where he’s often been accused by fans and pundits of not showing up in big games, not tracking back and essentially operating as a luxury player that’s a passenger in the side and doesn’t earn his wages. It doesn’t seem like there’s a way back for him into the squad under Arteta, but obviously he doesn’t want to leave as no club in their right mind is going to pay him as much as he earns there.

On top of this, Arsenal yesterday announced that they would be sacking their long serving mascot Gunnersaurus as part of cost cutting measures related to the current Coronavirus crisis – alongside several other employees – following the news that fans wouldn’t be allowed back into stadiums any time soon. This was met with a massive backlash on social media, especially after Arsenal announced the £45 million singing of Thomas Partey from Atletico Madrid sometime after.

Then, Mesut Ozil decided to get involved with one of the weirdest moves I think I’ve ever seen a professional footballer make via his Twitter account:

… so Jerry can continue his job that he loves so much. ❤️🙏🏼#JusticeForGunnersaurus #M1Ö #YaGunnersYa

— Mesut Özil (@MesutOzil1088) October 6, 2020

Wow. What is the point of that? I suppose he’s trying to win back the respect of the Arsenal fans who have called him out so often for sitting on the sidelines and picking up his massive paycheque by doing something for a much loved member of the club, but it also kinda seems like a barbed cuss at Arteta and the club for buying a new player at the expense of Gunnersaurus when Ozil is just sitting around twiddling his thumbs. It’s a win win situation for the guy though as either they allow Ozil to pay his wages or refuse to let him do this – either way they don’t end up looking good and Ozil looks like a hero.

However you view it, it’s one of the weirdest power plays in recent football history and I doubt anyone could have predicted it even a couple of days ago. Will be interesting to see how it plays out and if Arsenal even allow it to happen or what their response will be. Can see it getting wild though, because there’s no real way Ozil isn’t going to come out of this well and Arsenal aren’t going to end up looking like dicks.

For more of the same, remember when Ozil was attacked by a moped gang a while ago? Something is definitely going on with the guy.