Taking no prisoners.
Cast your mind back to August 2017, at the start of this season, when Stoke City beat Arsenal at the bet365 and we all thought they would finish ninth again. That seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it. But Mesut Özil has not forgotten.
As the narrative always goes when Arsenal lose, Özil was said to have ‘gone missing’. But it wasn’t only the Stoke fans who piled on that bandwagon, the local police got involved too.
The Stoke Police account was tweeted by an aggrieved Arsenal fan who tongue-in-cheekly reported a robbery (the result, for anyone not on board with the joke), with some vintage patter, suggesting that they were too busy looking for Mesut Özil. They even added ‘#banter’, just to reiterate how funny they were being.
Fair play to Özil, who by the looks of things has been waiting for the right moment to snap back with his own witty tweet. Today, that chance came as Arsenal comfortably beat Stoke 3-0 at the Emirates, thanks to goals from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette.
.@Policingstoke didn‘t help in the case of robbery last summer so we took matters into our own hands. 🕵🏼♂ Proud to announce we earned three hard fought points today for @TheIwobiEffect and all the other gunners 😉 #Banter pic.twitter.com/wVrFgPKeJh
— Mesut Özil (@M10) April 1, 2018
It is great to see footballers having a laugh on Twitter – too often their personalities become sanitised by PRs who can’t afford for them to make a gaffe, but I can’t help wondering how long Özil has had this screenshot saved in his phone. Hopefully sending this tweet will be a big weight off his shoulders.
