Arsenal Injury Crisis: Arsene Wenger denies risking Mesut Ozil's knee injury

Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger maintains there was no issue with allowing Mesut Özil to play on during the second half of the Barclays Premier League defeat at Chelsea while carrying a knee problem which would eventually see the German playmaker ruled out for up to two months.

Özil, the Gunner’s club record signing, faces a spell on the sidelines after scans by the German national team discovered a “partial rupture of the outer band of the left knee joint”.

It has been suggested Wenger went against the advice of both the player and Arsenal’s own medical staff by keeping Özil on at Stamford Bridge as his side looked to get back into a match they would go on to lose 2-0.

However, the Arsenal manager insists there was nothing untoward and he had even stressed to Özil the need to come off if feeling any muscle problems.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of Saturday’s game against Hull, Wenger said: “He (Özil) told me that once it was discovered on the scan. He did not tell me anything during the game, I did not even know.

“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 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 practice on Wednesday.

“On Wednesday morning, he said he could still not practice. They sent him for a scan, and in this scan they discovered that he a knee ligament injury which is quite serious.”

Özil is not expected to return to action until the start of 2015.


Credit: GuardianSport