Arsenal pair Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez’s futures lie elsewhere if they really want a chance of winning the Champions League
ARSENE WENGER is asked virtually every week about new Arsenal contracts for Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez — and every time he trots out the same old answer.
“We start negotiations soon and we are confident they will sign.”
The problem is that he has been saying that for the past six months and neither of the club’s star signings are exactly rushing to put pen to paper.
And why would they?
The manager and a great many of the club’s supporters might have given up hope of ever seriously challenging for the Champions League.
But at least some of the players still have ambitions of playing for a team who can win the European Cup.
And that as sure as hell ain’t Arsenal.
Even Sanchez’s late equaliser following Ozil’s blocked shot could not disguise the fact that the Gunners are no longer a major force in football’s most prestigious competition.
Truth is they got away with murder in the Parc des Princes last night, only saved from a humiliating defeat by the unlikely heroics of keeper David Ospina.
Sanchez’s goal merely papered over the cracks of another flawed display from Wenger’s team.
But the Colombian dynamo and his German playmaker can’t carry their colleagues through an entire campaign.
The two most eye-catching buys of Wenger’s long reign are both in the penultimate year of their contracts.
Rapidly approaching their 28th birthdays, they are at an age where they can’t afford to commit their long-term futures to a club happy just to make up the numbers.
But if they haven’t signed by the end of the season, it will be virtually impossible for Arsenal to keep them.
They cannot take the risk of allowing their two best players to enter the final year of their contracts and leave as free agents in 2018.
Sanchez continues to run himself into the ground in a desperate attempt to provoke a response from his under-performing team-mates.
But Ozil has the look of a player going through the motions, already resigned to the fact that he will have to find a new club if he wants to get his hands on the European Cup.
Nobody can question the German’s quality or ability to unlock an opposing defence with one eye-of-the-needle pass.
But almost from the moment he arrived in a club record £42.5million move from Real Madrid three years ago his body language has suggested a man who thinks he is doing Arsenal a favour.
There were times last night when he looked totally exasperated by his colleagues’ shortcomings as Arsenal were overrun in midfield by the French Champions.
To his credit, he did keep showing for the ball and probing for weaknesses in the well-drilled PSG defence.
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Yet he was happy to let his team-mates do his tackling and closing down and even his dead ball delivery was only so-so.
It all meant that Sanchez found himself isolated and starved of service up front, barely able to test rookie keeper Alphonse Areola.
And it was only when Wenger introduced the physical presence of Olivier Giroud that Sanchez was able to find the space to pounce on the rebound from Ozil’s 78th minute effort.
It was almost Arsenal’s first attempt on target all night and enough to give them genuine hope of finishing top of Group A.
Wenger had stressed the importance of getting a positive result in what is expected to be their toughest fixture in this group.
If Arsenal can go on to finish top of the table, they might even have a chance of getting beyond the last 16 for the first time since 2010.
Yet it is safe to assume that the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern will not be quaking in their boots at the prospect of facing Arsenal in the knock-out stages.