It’s not like football fans to overreact to an innocuous detail from a team photo.
Wait, let us try that again.
It’s entirely like football fans to overreact to an innocuous detail from a team photo.
Arsenal midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain shared this photo of the Gunners squad enjoying a meal out, but someone’s missing.
Dinner with the boys 🍴 pic.twitter.com/Wo4JneQjr1
— Alex Ox-Chamberlain (@Alex_OxChambo) January 24, 2017
Mesut Özil is nowhere to be seen in the photo, and – while Santi Cazorla and Shkodran Mustafi are also absent, as well as Mohamed Elneny, away on AFCON duty with Egypt – that didn’t stop fans going into panic mode about one man and one man only.
where's Özil bro
— RM (@ryanmcapalot) January 24, 2017
https://twitter.com/jesscampbellftw/status/824004296006057988
https://twitter.com/EhabJohnson/status/824009762278871040
where's Mesut 👀
— Luke – LR8TV (@LR8TV_) January 24, 2017
Still, at least some of the responses were more tongue-in-cheek.
Thrilled to see Özil doesn't hang with you losers irl
— The Boys (Back in Town) (@MisterWenger) January 24, 2017
https://twitter.com/EalZed_19/status/824007095242620931
Perhaps it was Oxlade-Chamberlain’s way of trolling his own club’s fans after they jumped the gun over reported transfer target Riyad Mahrez sitting out a Leicester City photoshoot over the summer.
Or maybe it was much more innocuous than that – after all, Özil had a perfectly good reason for not being with his teammates.
The German is in the Swedish city of Göteborg, with Metro reporting that the former Real Madrid man has been given a short break by manager Arsène Wenger.
It is unclear whether Özil will return in time for Saturday’s FA Cup fourth round trip to Southampton.
