
Originally Posted by
The Emirates Gallactico
Ozil could have easily got the same wage if not much higher at other clubs considering he was available on a bosman in a few months. Plenty of top teams would have snapped him up a free and he would have had his pick of elite clubs. Given that, why would he remain at our circus unless he was was assured of some kind of change of direction soon to get us out of the current rut?
And Wenger doesn't get into the weeds of contract stuff. He lets Ivan/Dick/Huss etc know whether he wants to keep or sell a player but it's then up to the contract negotiation team to iron out the details and persuade said player to stay - remember the situation with Cashley when he nearly crashed his car when he was only offered 55k a week instead of 60k by Edelman? Given he's a star player, it's likely Ivan was heavily involved in the negotiations and he would have been in a position to make promises to him and Ozil must have believed in them.
It's no surprise that the Joachim Low rumours started roughly around the time that Ozil signed.