Mesut Ozil was faced with an awkward dilemma when he joined Arsenal from Real Madrid for £42.5m in 2013. On the whole everything was very nice – his salary, his new north London home, the delightful Mr Wenger – but there was a small issue with his Instagram account.

The problem was, his handle was m10_official, and that would look a bit silly now the Gunners had just handed him the No11 shirt. Should he mention it?

In the end, Mesut thought better of it. Just sign the contract, start a new life and try to win some Premier League titles. Deal with the shirt thing later once he’d got his feet under the table and a couple of PFA Player of the Year titles under his belt.

But that was a mistake.

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Four years later, he has no league titles, no PFA gongs and – most irritatingly of all – he is reminded of that Insta inaccuracy every time he wants to post a moody shot of himself wearing sunglasses.

This cannot go on. This will not go on. Today’s Sun “exclusively” reports that Mesut is sorting the shirt issue once and for all, with the following ultimatum: give him No10, or he’s off.

Now, you may be thinking that Mesut was off anyway, given his much-publicised failure to sign a new contract at the Emirates. But apparently not.

The Sun says the German playmaker will sign a fresh deal if the club bows to his key demand of being given the No10 shirt. This would apparently “boost Ozil’s money-making brand” – presumably by attracting the millions of Instagram users who think m10_official must be someone else.

The problem is that the cherished jersey is currently occupied by Jack Wilshere, albeit only on Carabao Cup and Europa League nights, and he probably doesn’t want to swap.

Should have said something in 2013 when your stock was at its peak Mesut, you wally.

Real Madrid ‘want five Premier League stars’

In non-shirt-related transfer gossip, Ozil’s former club Real Madrid are planning to raid the Premier League for five new players, according to the Mirror.

Three of them play for Man Utd – Juan Mata, Ander Herrera and Zlatan Ibrahimovic – which makes a change because it’s normally United who are trying to sign half of Real’s squad.

The other two names on Real’s shopping list are Arsenal’s Alexis Sanchez and Liverpool’s Emre Can, and the thing this quintet have in common is that all their contracts expire at the end of this season.

The other thing they have in common is that probably none of them will end up signing for Real Madrid.

Barcelona want some new signings too – and all of them have reportedly been proposed by Lionel Messi. The Express says the Argentine has told the Catalan giants to buy Monaco’s Thomas Lemar, Lyon’s Nabil Fekir and Leicester’s Riyad Mahrez. He’s not their manager, by the way.

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Elsewhere, Southampton will attempt to solve their goalscoring problems by targeting Monaco’s former Manchester City striker Stevan Jovetic (Mirror), Paris Saint-Germain will put Angel Di Maria up for sale in January in a bid to meet Financial Fair Play requirements (Mail) and West Ham owner David Sullivan says he had “no choice” but to appoint David Moyes as the club’s new manager (Sun). The tabloid adds that Moyes “bounced into east London” yesterday and took charge of his first training session “at 2pm on the dot”. How could his new squad of players not be wowed by such dazzling punctuality?

@darlingkevin