Arsenal fans panic as Mesut Özil is absent from team photo…but there’s a good reason

It's not like football fans to overreact to an innocuous detail from a team photo.

Wait, let us try that again. It's entirely like football fans to overreact to an innocuous detail from a team photo. Arsenal midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain shared this photo of the Gunners squad enjoying a meal out, but someone's missing. https://twitter.com/Alex_OxChambo/status/824004160492359680 Mesut Özil is nowhere to be seen in the photo, and  - while Santi Cazorla and Shkodran Mustafi are also absent, as well as Mohamed Elneny, away on AFCON duty with Egypt - that didn't stop fans going into panic mode about one man and one man only. https://twitter.com/SimplyOxlade/status/824004268520771584 https://twitter.com/jesscampbellftw/status/824004296006057988 https://twitter.com/EhabJohnson/status/824009762278871040 https://twitter.com/Luke_Rice8/status/824004992105381888 Still, at least some of the responses were more tongue-in-cheek. https://twitter.com/MOliverFan/status/824005174196899840 https://twitter.com/EalZed_19/status/824007095242620931 Perhaps it was Oxlade-Chamberlain's way of trolling his own club's fans after they jumped the gun over reported transfer target Riyad Mahrez sitting out a Leicester City photoshoot over the summer. Or maybe it was much more innocuous than that - after all, Özil had a perfectly good reason for not being with his teammates. The German is in the Swedish city of Göteborg, with Metro reporting that the former Real Madrid man has been given a short break by manager Arsène Wenger. It is unclear whether Özil will return in time for Saturday's FA Cup fourth round trip to Southampton. Catch up with this week's episode of 888sport Football Friday Live