Mikel Arteta insists lessons have been learned from Mesut Ozil debacle

Mike Arteta insists Arsenal cannot have a repeat of the Mesut Ozil situation, with the World Cup winning midfielder poised to depart for Fenerbahce having spent the previous eight months earning £350,000 per week while not playing for the Gunners.

Ozil has not featured for Arteta’s side since March, and was left out of their Premier League and Europa League squads for the 2020/21 campaign.

The playmaker is closing in on a move to Fenerbahce, while fellow outcast Sokratis Papastathopoulos had his contract terminated in January, having not featured for the Arsenal first team this term.

“You don’t want to get into this position again, that’s for sure,” Arteta replied (via the Daily Mail) when asked if lessons had been learned. “Not for the player, not for the club. But it’s happening more and more at every club and this situation you can see in other clubs things happening like that.

“You have to have that communication open, obviously to prevent it as much as possible and if they happen, just make a decision and don’t try to delay a situation that is not working for much longer.”

Richard Garlick will join Arsenal as head of football operations later in 2021, and Arteta said that a more settled executive team will help to prevent the club making the same costly mistakes again.

“Obviously a lot of things happened institutionally at the club and with some of the big decision-makers as well,” he added.

“We are trying to create a really strong team with different qualities that hopefully is going to give us more sustainability and success in our decisions.

“Sometimes it’s impossible to see what’s going to happen in three years’ time. We tried to resolve those situations early in the summer, to try and avoid what we had but sometimes it’s not possible.”