Arsene Wenger congratulates Mesut Ozil on Ballon d’Or nomination (despite not being nominated)

This whole awkward situation involving Arsene Wenger could have easily been avoided.

Cringe reached stratospheric levels during the Arsenal boss's pre-Sunderland press conference on Friday morning. At one point Wenger was asked to give his thoughts on Mesut Ozil receiving a nomination for the prestigious Ballon d'Or award for the world's best player. The only problem is that if you look through the 30-strong shortlist for the award, you'll see that the German's name is nowhere to be found. That didn't stop consummate professional Wenger from giving a perfect politician's answer to the question though.

"Certainly there is a big satisfaction for [Ozil] and for us as well, but I am against it because I think it gets in the head of players. "We have seen many people only thinking about themselves because they are obsessed by Ballon d’Or and not by the team performance and I believe football is a collective sport and we live already in a world where everything is individualised. We want to respect what football is about, first about the team effort."

It may seem a bit strange that Wenger didn't know whether his own player was nominated or not, but his very unfavourable comments about the accolade might explain why he didn't cop that Ozil didn't make the cut. It appears as though the Ballon d'Or couldn't be further from Wenger's mind.

"Of course, I encourage and congratulate the players who do well and I’m happy for that. But when you look at the history you do not always think that it has been the most objective decision always and I think that the players who are the best, we know very well about them. "Let’s take care of those who are not as much in the glory. The best, we know all about them."

That leaves us with a couple of unanswered questions such as why was that bloody question even asked of Wenger and why did no one else at the press conference speak up when Wenger started going on about Ozil's nomination?