With Granit Xhaka set to leave Arsenal after five years at the club to join Jose Mourinho at Roma, it’s fair to say that he departs The Emirates as divisive as ever.
With 161 league appearances in his spell here, Xhaka has been ever-present in The Arsenal side of recent memory, and has been pivotal in the clubs latest two trophies, both of them FA Cups in 2017 and 2020.
Yet The Swiss international has failed to win over large portions of The Arsenal faithful, often being branded as not good enough or too error prone.
This is largely due to the misconceptions that Xhaka has carried with him since his arrival from Germany, with the assumption by a lot of fans that he was ‘the next Vieira’ or a combative defensive midfielder.
Granit Xhaka is not a destroyer. He is not the player you deploy to stop every attack opponents may have. Akin to a quarterback in the NFL, he is the first line of attack. With 6.72 progressive passes per 90 (ranking him in the top 7% of midfielders in the top 5 leagues) and 81 touches per 90 (top 11%) Xhaka is his team’s metronome, the tempo setter, the…you get the idea.
Since Mikel Artetas’ switch to a 4231 following the breakthrough of Hale End prospect, Emile Smith Rowe, Arsenal now progress with a 325 in possession, with Xhaka dropping into the LCB role, this allows the left back (usually Kieran Tierney) to join the attacking line.
Tierney is a fan favourite at Arsenal (for good reason) and is undoubtedly one of The Gunners most important players, but he is only able to play with the freedom he does knowing that the space he leaves behind is covered by Xhaka.
The Swiss captain’s ability to progress the ball through carries is an incredibly underrated aspect of his game too. Ranking in the top 9% for progressive carrying distance, Xhaka quite often progresses forward to join the midfield line near the end of build-up — transforming the shape to a 235 as Arsenal progress.
Despite losing the captain’s armband in November 2019 following the infamous incident against Crystal Palace, where Xhaka reacted to jeers from the crowd following his substitution, Xhaka still stands as one of the main leaders at the club. Respected by all within the Arsenal dressing room (as evident by his teammates voting for him to be captain ahead of the 19/20 season) the 28 year old’s voice is one of authority and respect, constantly shouting out to his teammates to cover runners and organise their defensive shape.
With key authoritative figures such as David Luiz and Xhaka leaving this summer, the collection of natural leaders at Arsenal is…small to say the least. Whilst it is more so a matter of when rather then if Kieran Tierney takes the captains armband, The Scotsman is not as vocal as Xhaka is on the pitch just yet, and the beginning of the 21/22 season looks to be one with a lot of soldiers, and not many commanders.
A common narrative and large criticism of Xhaka’s game since his arrival has been the amount of errors he commits. Personally, I find this aspect of his game to be heavily over exaggerated.
To start, Xhaka averages 81 touches per game, with 21 of them being within the defensive third. This puts him in the 11th and 8th percentile for these metrics respectively for midfielders across the top five leagues. A large portion of the midfielders game occurs around Arsenal’s penalty box, meaning any missed passes or dispossessions are far more likely to result in an attack for the other team.
Secondly, ‘Errors leading to goals’ is an incredibly arbitrary stat. Bar a very finite amount of goals that you can say are blameless, almost every goal conceded is a mixture of mistakes. Failure to track runners, poor positioning, miscommunication — there are countless mistakes before a goal, and it’s often at the fault of a multitude of players, not just one.
Xhaka is in the unfortunate situation where every perceivable mistake he commits will get amplified more than the majority of other players. In recent seasons, they have largely cleared up and regressed to a positional average.
To give some examples: Over the last two seasons, N’golo Kante and Granit Xhaka are tied on two ‘errors leading to goals’, yet only one is seen as ‘error prone’. This is in no way me saying Kante should also be painted with the ‘error prone’ brush, far from it, but it does show how fan perceptions and media narratives are hard to shake once imprinted.
Whilst still not a perfect stat, ‘errors leading to shots’ is a slightly better representative of how costly mistakes can be. In this metric, Xhaka only averages 0.02 per 90, placing him in the bottom 39% of all midfielders. Comparatively, Jorginho averages 0.03, and Kalvin Phillips averages 0.04 per 90.
At around £20m, the sale of Granit Xhaka seems incredibly undervalued for someone as important to their team as he is to Arsenal, although I’m sure his request to leave after agreeing to stay for one more year last summer is reasoning for this.
For Xhaka though, the move makes sense. The Serie A is an even better fit for his style of play, and a fresh start where the fans aren’t split on him will only boost his confidence and improve his game. As evident by his performances at Euro 2020, Xhaka thrives with that extra second on the ball.
Despite the connotations of being rash, lacking concentration and passing sideways, in Granit Xhaka Arsenal are losing a key cog in progression, reliability and arguably the most natural leader in the squad.
Stats Via Fbref as of 30.06.21
