Mesut 1-0 Kroenke: Ozil offers to pay much-loved Gunnersaurus' wages in bid to keep Jerry Quy at Arsenal

Mesut Ozil shows class in offering to pay Gunnersaurus wages to keep Jerry Quy at Arsenal despite Kroenke's cost-cutting

6 October, 2020 8:46

Layth Yousif

Mesut 1-0 Kroenke: Ozil offers to pay much-loved Gunnersaurus' wages in bid to keep Jerry Quy at Arsenal

Mesut Ozil has offered to pay the wages of Arsenal's much-loved mascot Gunnersaurus. PICTURE: In happier times, the Gunners green dinosaur with Thierry Henry and the Premier League trophy in 2004.

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Arsenal midfielder Mesut Ozil has notched his first (PR) goal of the season by offering to pay the wages of Jerry Quy, the man who plays the role of Gunnersaurus, the club's mascot.

With owner Stan Kroenke creating uproar among Gooners everywhere on the planet following the decision to sack the club's much-loved Gunnersuaurus, Ozil moved into action to stop the loveable green dinosaur from being dropped.

Before Ozil's intervention, Quy - the man behind Gunneraurus, who has worked for the Gunners for more than three decades - was set lose his job as part of Kroneke's cost-cutting regime at the Emirates.

“I was so sad that Jerry Quy, aka our famous and loyal mascot Gunnersaurus and integral part of our club, was being made redundant after 27 years,” said the 31-year-old German in a post on Twitter.

“As such, I’m offering to reimburse Arsenal with the full salary of our big green guy as long as I will be an Arsenal player so Jerry can continue his job that he loves so much.”

Arsenal said they had to make staff redundant because of the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Gunners' first-team players and head coach Mikel Arteta agreed a 12.5 per cent pay cut in April. While the club's executive team also agreed to waive more than a third of their salaries over the next 12 months.

Reports suggested Ozil was one of the few players at the club who decided not to agree to the move.

While the German World Cup winner could comfortably afford the cut to his £350k wages, he had concerns over where the money was going, in light of Kroenke's overall family fortune pushing $15 billion dollars.

However, Ozil's move to fund Gunnersaurus suggests the German has no qualms over embarassing Kroenke, with his penny-pinching backfiring spectacularly.

Follow Layth on Twitter @laythy29

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comments

Nigel
Oct 07, 2020, 19:22 #117164

That toad MO deserves no credit for this. The amount that Mr Quy earns per year is probably less than 5% of what the toad robs from the club in a week. Had MO resigned so that his wages could be used to support all those being made redundant then that would be a story we'd all celebrate.
Swiss Wenger
Oct 07, 2020, 14:47 #117162

Layth, you've let the reptile off lightly here. After the Europa League Final my 11 year old son asked me to take the Mesut Ozil poster down from his bedroom wall because he was the subject of ridicule at school when his mates saw it at a sleepover. I replaced it with another former player. He really thinks he is bigger than the club. A club his former boss said "I built this club". A club he has been instrumental in the decline of, failing to earn a penny of the tens of millions lavished upon his iconic reputation. A reputation that was covered in excrement at the last World Cup as the exposure of his credentials laid bare the extinction of his professional career and weak, languid, insipid, decayed and rotting performances. I will crack open a fine bottle to celebrate the departure of that defining stain of the Wenger era and keep the choice of posters, in future, to those who have achieved rather than those who flatter to deceive. His performance against Burnley in February was a sight to behold as he was given the freedom of Turf Moor, Dyche fully aware that he posed no threat whatsoever. And so it came to be, it was like playing with 10 men and we didn't win. Mesut, if you are reading this, and I bet you employ someone to read all the blogs on your behalf, I will pray to my God that I never see you in an Arsenal shirt again and that your poisonous and divisive name does not enter any Arsenal roster of those eligible to play in any competition that the club qualify to partake in. Remembered for what you didn't do rather than what you were paid to do. Mesut, the Powder Puff Glove Kicking Fairy.
Moscowgooner
Oct 07, 2020, 14:28 #117161

I’d much rather he - and Arsenal FC - contribute significant funds to keeping EFL clubs alive rather than paying to keep one club mascot on the books. (And why the mascot rather than, say scouts or ticket office staff?) The greed of the big clubs and their owners (and the ‘big’ players for that matter) has never looked more egregious than now. Ultimately this is more about Ozil making a point to Arsenal management than it is about protecting a job.
Kroenkephobe
Oct 07, 2020, 10:49 #117160

Hi Layth. I disagree as I said btl another report. Kroenke - god love him - would not even know we had a mascot let alone one that is a caricature of an extinct reptile. He probably knows very little about any of them including Edu and Arteta. He'll obliquely know Vinai as the numbers guy and that's about it. Ozil standing up for the downtrodden? Don't make me laugh. Given he no longer works weeknights and weekends, his hourly rate must be many thousand fold larger than the hapless Mr Quy. And if you bear in mind that they're all paid by us the fans, this merely amounts to a very minor and meaningless rearrangement of others' cash. Ozil is no modern day Trotsky - he's happiest associating and posing with presidents who harass journalists and murder their own citizens. I have sympathy with Mr Quy's plight and that of anyone who faces redundancy but MO is no saviour and his intervention here is mediaeval in character. The club should find Quy a job that gives him more dignity and a chance to earn at least as much as the going rate for a mascot. So the result should be PR disaster 1, cod philanthropy offered by a has been 0 with the assist and own goal both provided by MO. Late capitalist bollix...