Arsenal came from behind to get their latest Europa League campaign off to a winning start in Austria against Rapid Vienna in the absence of Mesut Ozil.
The club’s highest paid star appears to have played his final game for the club after Mikel Arteta excluded him from his Premier League squad, a week after failing to find room for him in Arsenal’s European squad.
Ozil outlined his dissatisfaction in an emotional Instagram post earlier this week but vowed to do everything within his powers to ensure an often turbulent seven-year spell in north London would end on a happier note.
While his team-mates were strutting their stuff in Austria, Ozil attempted to keep his 21.5million followers on Twitter entertained by posting a series of tweets during the game, predicting the scoreline, offering words of encouragement to goalkeeper Bernd Leno and running a poll on the man of the match awards.
Asked for his reaction to Ozil’s social media commentary, Arteta said: ‘This is great! This is what I want from all the players that aren’t in our squad. I didn’t expect anything different to that, so it’s good to hear.’
‘No,’ he added bluntly when asked if the Ozil circus was becoming a source of frustration and a distraction.
‘I think it’s part of the situation that we have. When we have big players in this position, it’s normal that people want to know and fans want that information and you have to ask the questions.
‘So I take it in a natural way, I try to respond with honesty and clarity and give the information that is available from the inside.’
On the nature of the victory, Arteta said: ‘We knew it would be a difficult match and we made it a little bit harder with a few of the decisions we made and the goal we conceded, which if anything is my fault because I demand those things.
‘But I really liked the reaction, in the second half we understood much better the spaces that we have to attack, we played with more purpose and we generated much more, even though we conceded a late chance with another misunderstanding at the back.’
