Arsenal and Manchester United famously don't get on, with their rivalry extending back even further than the days of Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger.
That hasn't stopped one Gunners legend from voicing his praise of two Manchester United players, though, after they escaped a late scare against Copenhagen on Tuesday night to pick up their first win of their 2023/24 Champions League campaign.
Harry Maguire scored the only goal of the game in the 72nd minute, converting a header from a Christian Eriksen cross. Disaster nearly struck, however.
With the score 1-0 deep into stoppage time at the end of the game, referee Marco Guida awarded the Danish side a penalty after Scott McTominay raised his boot high against Mohamed Elyounoussi. Jordan Larsson - son of Henrik - stepped up, but Andre Onana saved his spot kick in what proved to be the last action of the match.
That prompted former Arsenal hero Mesut Ozil to make a ringing endorsement on X (Twitter) of Onana and Maguire.
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"Harry Maguire & Andre Onana deserve that - silencing their haters," Ozil wrote.
The Manchester United duo have come in for plenty of criticism at the start of the 2023/24 season - and even longer for Maguire - after making mistakes for Erik ten Hag's side and not performing to what many people deem a high enough standard.
For Ozil, though, their match-winning actions have done enough to keep the critics off their backs. During his eight years at Arsenal, in which he won four FA Cups, Ozil faced plenty of backlash himself due to his apparent lack of work rate.
The German chose not to pay attention to it, though.
"Look, I know there's people out there that like me, there are also people who don't like me," he told the Daily Mail in 2018. "This is a fact of life. But, for me, what is important is what the people in my inner circle tell me. I don't care what people say outside of that. It doesn't affect me.
"If the coach, or people in my circle, tell me: 'Mesut you have to do this, or have to do that,' then I listen. I'll take that and work on it. But I don't look at what someone else is saying. It really doesn't affect me."
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