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During an otherwise unremarkable weekend of matches around the Premier League, the marquee meeting is undoubtedly Arsenal and Chelsea’s clash at the Emirates Stadium.

The Blues will head to north London looking to build on a 2-1 home win over Newcastle last week. The Gunners, meanwhile, stumble out to defend their home pitch following a run of just seven points from their past six Premier League matches.

One of the major questions heading into this encounter is whether Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil will make his way into Unai Emery’s starting XI. The German midfielder has not started in any of the club’s last four matches.

Amid the turmoil surrounding Ozil’s long-term future at the Emirates Stadium, Cheeky Sport’s Joel Beya joined the Fixture in Focus Podcast to offer up his take on the situation. He said…

“We don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors, anything could be happening. He could have been playing through his injuries, he could have been managed – who knows? The manager might think that right now – or should I say the head coach might think right now – that he’s not fully fit. We don’t know.

“I think that’s the difference with today – we turn around and go ‘why wasn’t he playing’, ‘why wasn’t this person doing this’, ‘why wasn’t this person doing that’. But the truth is sometimes we just don’t know what’s going on.

“He could be going through a personal family matter that we have no idea about and [Emery] said ‘look take some time off’ or he could have added ketchup to his food and then the coach said ‘I’m not happy with that’. We don’t know. So I think sometimes we need to understand it’s like any other workplace or any other environment. We need to just take what the coach says and go from there.”

Make sure you catch the full conversation for more on Ozil, Emery and Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea side ahead of Saturday’s clash on this week’s edition of the Fixture in Focus Podcast. 

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