Natalie Pike, who is a presenter for Manchester City’s City Square Live and a pundit for BBC Radio Manchester, appeared on a recent edition of the Football Social Daily podcast where she spent some time talking about the possibility of Arsenal playmaker Mesut Ozil moving to West Bromwich Albion in the January transfer window.
This comes after Ozil has been frozen out of Mikel Arteta’s squad at the Emirates Stadium this term, with the 2014 World Cup winner having not made a single first-team appearance for the north London club in the 2020/21 campaign.
With Baggies boss Sam Allardyce recently admitting that West Brom’s January transfer activity will be an important part of their top flight survival bid this term, Pike has shared that she thinks the West Midlands club should try and do a deal to get Ozil, who is Arsenal’s highest-earning player, to The Hawthorns to save the relegation-battling side’s season, with the pundit indicating that she believes this would be an intelligent move for the £4.5m-rated man to make.
She said: “I’m going to throw this out there, I think if Mesut Ozil went to West Brom, that would be a genius move for him. Hear me out – at the minute, Ozil is obviously known, people call him a mercenary, he’s sitting there taking his £350k per week, not even being in the squad, his reputation is in absolute tatters.
“So, here’s my theory, he goes to West Brom, which is one of the last teams in the world that you’d probably think he would go to, he goes there, he shows the world the player that we know he used to be, he turns their season around, he keeps them up, everybody’s opinion of him changes, his reputation is restored and then he can go and get his big move back to Real Madrid or Barcelona or wherever he wants to go after that.
“Ozil to West Brom – I am championing that.”
Do West Brom have any chance of signing Ozil?
YES
NO
TIF Thoughts on what Pike had to say about Ozil to West Brom…
Given that Ozil earns five times as much as West Brom’s highest-earning player, Charlie Austin, per Spotrac, perhaps it would be difficult for the Baggies to sign Ozil on any sort of deal, unless, perhaps, the Baggies were able to convince the Gunners to allow Ozil to join the West Midlands club until the end of the season and heavily subsidise his wages.
However, even though Ozil isn’t being used by the Gunners at present, you could certainly argue that he would strengthen West Brom, so perhaps the north London club would be reluctant to effectively pay the former Germany international to play for a Premier League rival.
It’s unclear if this is a move that Ozil would want and even if he shares a similar view to Pike on this scenario and feels he could benefit from it, it seems like it would be a difficult deal for West Brom to pull off, even if Pike may be right in saying that there would be benefits for Ozil and West Brom from this move.