Martin Keown has accused Mesut Ozil of changing from the player who signed a new contract during Arsene Wenger's final days at Arsenal.
Ozil is out in the cold at Arsenal under Mikel Arteta, having been left out of the Gunners' Europa League squad and not made an appearance since March.
It is a far cry from Ozil's pomp at Arsenal under Wenger, when he joined for a then club-record fee of £42.5m and flourished under the Frenchman's management.
Wenger recently spoke out against the 'waste' of Ozil, lamenting the situation the midfielder and his former club found themselves in.
Keown believes Ozil's performances under Wenger were such that the former Gunners boss would not criticise him. Yet he argued that Ozil is a completely different player to the one Wenger managed.
"I wouldn’t expect Wenger to speak against him," the former Gunners defender talkSPORT.
"Looking back at the Wenger years, he signed his new contract in that last six months of Arsene Wenger’s tenure.
"I don’t believe it’s the same Ozil now that he was managing at that point.
"Maybe the player has gone into a comfort zone a little bit, signing that new contract, because whether he likes it or not his statistics are nowhere near the player he was.
"It’s a different player now to the one that Arsene Wenger was managing.
"Wenger will have looked at the talents – he doesn’t look at what a player can’t do, he looks at what he can do.
"This man is a great visionary in terms of his passing, trying to get people in, his assists. He sees passes that people don’t even think of and that has just ebbed away.
"He hasn’t worked hard enough out of possession.
"Arteta coming in with a new culture – or going back to the old culture of wanting players to do both sides of the game, defend when you haven’t got it and then the artistry when you have – at the moment it’s not quite working.
"It’s not looking like there is going to be a way forward, he is going to be naming his 25 players shortly and it doesn’t look like he is going to be in that."
There have been reports that the Gunners want to open talks to end Ozil's contract, which has nine months to run, prematurely by reaching a settlement and hastening his departure from north London.
