Martin Keown has boldly claimed Mesut Ozil decided to pull himself out of contention to face Everton. Last week, Ozil reacted to being taken off against Manchester City by kicking his gloves away angrily. After the match, Freddie Ljungberg said: “How he reacts is up to him and I’ll deal with it.
“We’ll see what it means for the future but of course we want players to behave the right way.”
Ahead of the match with Everton, Arsenal revealed Ozil was dealing with a foot injury that would be assessed.
And when the starting line up to face the Toffees was announced, Ozil was not included in the squad.
Ljungberg was then asked about Ozil’s absence and said: “Mesut has something on his foot but we have things happening there so he wouldn’t have been in the squad anyway after what happened in the last game.”
Former Gunner Keown is on punditry duty for the game and when asked for his thoughts on Ljungberg’s comments, he gave a damning assessment of Ozil’s commitment.
“I’m not convinced,” he said on BT Sport.
“What I will say is Freddie Ljungberg has managed with a great deal of dignity and a great deal of calm in difficult circumstances.
“Ozil is one of those problems that Arteta must manage that.
He said: “We know Mikel’s going to be the manager so it’s a bit of a special situation but we’re going to do everything we can to get a good result.
“We’ve spoken a little bit, we haven’t spoken too much, but of course he’s here, watching, and he wants the best for the team.
“For me, what I’ve seen from Everton they’re a little bit old-style.
“They play very direct, a lot of long-balls, a lot of fighting so I wanted to put a team out there that would work hard and fight to win the second ball if needed.”