Mesut Özil injury not the result of Arsenal medical staff says Wenger [divider]
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger claimed that Mesut Özil’s injury was totally coincidental and had nothing to do with the medical staff.
“We had big injuries and coincidental injuries. I don’t know what we can do about Giroud’s injury,” Wenger said.
“Debuchy was on his own when he did the ankle.
“Then you have Özil, passing the ball with the outside left foot. He must have done that a million times.
“He told me he just wanted to give the ball and heard a little crack. There are a lot of post-World Cup injuries and not many soft tissue injuries.”
Arsenal appointed Germany’s former head fitness coach Shad Forsythe to help with players conditioning.
Wenger believes nobody could have prevented Özil’s injury and that his staff are not to blame.
“He (Özil) did not tell me anything during the game, I did not even know,” Wenger said.
“What happened was that at half-time, just before we went out, the physio told me ‘Özil has a little pain with his knee, but it is not bad.
“He wanted to go on and I told him ‘if you don’t feel well, tell me and I will take you off straight away’. He never did that during the whole game, and after that I left him on because we were in a position where we needed to score a goal and he can deliver the final ball.
“Then after the game, he went to Germany. With Germany, they thought at the start it was nothing.
“We played on Sunday, on Monday he was off, and on Tuesday they gave him the day off. He was supposed to practise on Wednesday.
“On Wednesday morning, he said he could still not practise.
“They sent him for a scan, and in this scan they discovered that he had a knee ligament injury which is quite serious.”
Özil has been ruled out with a knee injury until the new year.
Olivier Giroud, Mathieu Debuchy, Laurent Koscielny, Aaron Ramsey, Yaya Sanogo, Mikel Arteta, Serge Gnabry, Theo Walcott and Nacho Monreal are also injured.
