Arsenal technical director Edu has confessed it has been "strange" at times going to the Gunners hierarchy and urging them to pay out on a player's contract to speed up his exit.
The club have found themselves in this peculiar situation more times than they'd have hoped in recent years, but Arsenal have developed the habit of paying players to leave once the standard of the individual in question has declined massively.
Of all the examples, Mesut Ozil was undeniably the most high-profile. Having signed a mega-money contract extension in the January window of 2018 worth up to £350,000 per-week, the mercurial German playmaker barely contributed to the Gunners efforts over the following two years.
It became an albatross around the club and manager Mikel Arteta's necks, especially as Ozil had gone to war with the Spaniard's predecessor Unai Emery and won. Desperate to ensure he didn't meet the same fate, Arteta exiled Ozil from the first-team fold.
Of course, this move only led to question marks over why Arsenal were forking out so much for someone they were unwilling to use. As a result, both parties eventually agreed it was best to part ways in January 2021, with Ozil joining boyhood club Fenerbahce.
However, not all was as it seemed as around four months into his spell in Turkey, it emerged that Arsenal were still footing the bill for around 90 per cent of Ozil's wages. It quickly became a source of ridicule for rival fans that Arsenal were paying the World Cup winner £315,000-per-week to play for someone else.
With that being said, Edu has since explained why it is beneficial to get rid of a player no longer pulling their weight as soon as possible. Speaking to The Athletic, the Gunners chief has shed light on pitching the idea of paying players to leave to the rest of the club's board.
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"I know it hurts, I know it’s strange when I go to the board and say, ‘Sometimes it’s better to pay a player to leave, than maintain them’," he conceded.
"But I consider it an investment. Sometimes people say, ‘It’s expensive’. I say, ‘No, it’s investment’. But someone will pay if you sell? No, guys — if the player is above 26, 27 and not performing, big salary, no chance.
"They don’t have a transfer value and are comfortable on a long contract living in London. So we needed to clean the squad and if we had to pay some to go, I considered it an investment."
Ozil's situation was a similar one to that of Shkodran Mustafi. A fellow countryman of Ozil, the much-maligned central defender dug his heels in and enjoyed the full benefits of his lucrative contract despite drastically failing to deliver on the pitch.
The former Valencia centre-back joined Schalke on an initial six-month deal, during which time the club were relegated from the Bundesliga, but Arsenal are also thought to have paid part of his wages, considering he still had time left on his Gunners contract when he left.
Elsewhere, while Arsenal are not still paying any of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's eye-watering wages now that he is at Barcelona, the Gunners did pay the Gabon international a settlement to end his own staggeringly lucrative contract of £350,000-a-week at the Emirates.
