Granit Xhaka

We are talking “Premier League Proven.” I swear, people don’t read to understand they read to find reason to argue. It is ok if you think Xhaka will be fantastic and base that on his experience in Germany. Frankly, I kind of buy that argument. But atm he hasn’t shown me too much to get excited about other than in the last game and I fully, fully acknowledge that it is a minuscule sample size. I think it is reasonable to give Kante the benefit of the doubt based on the fact that he wasn’t just good in the premier league, he was awesome for an entire campaign. Will he flop? Maybe, but why is it so insane to give him credit and use that full year’s data (the only data I f*ing have) to suggest he will be good again?

1 Like

I do love the guy, but I have to confess to being a little worried about his going flying into tackles.

“Premier League Proven” means exactly nothing though. All it says is that you’ve played in the league before, so you have a year or two of experience, which will eventually help to get used to a new team easier but that’s about it. It doesn’t say anything about the quality of your play, which in football will be the most deciding factor if you can make it at a certain level or not.

I’m also not trying to find a reason to argue or am I saying which player I find to be better, I simply have a problem with the idea that PL proven is actually a thing outside of pundits throwing it around when they don’t know anything else to say.

1 Like

Disagree - a player who played in premier league and was crap is not “proven,” at least not in my definition. I would say rather than opposite in fact - they were premier league flop in that case. Anyway, my point was that Kante had one season (out of one) in which he was fantastic. That is better data to suggest he will be very good in the premier league than the year before when we had less data to go on, no?

He seems to have a decent footballing brain, I’m confident he will adapt but there’s going to be a learning curve when it comes to that no doubt. It’s not just costly for bookings. The players in this league are used to it they will exploit it and just go right past and then we’re all out of sorts.

I wonder if coaching methods have changed since my playing days as rule #2 of defending was “don’t leave your feet”.

1 Like

Your team must have conceded a lot of headers

9 Likes

Well, you can have players that are proven after playing a year on a high level, you can have players that are proven because they’ve been mediocre all their career at a mid table club. Lots of ways to define what can mean PL proven. I agree though that from what we’ve seen last season he’ll do fine at Chelsea and chances are that he will succeed, but so are Xhaka’s after a couple of years at a very interesting club in Mönchengladbach.

It mostly depends on how the player is used, Xhaka could quite possibly flop at Arsenal because of how we play but succeed at Man City or United.

2 Likes

This.
A player could succeed at one club and miserably fail at another, simply because of the internal workings of a club (management, loccer room atmosphere, tactics and so on), which are infinitely more important to how a player performs than the league. Do people really suggest Andy Carroll is PL proven because he had a good season here once, and DiMaria isn’t up to playing in England because his United career was less than stellar?

7 Likes

If I could I’d like this a thousand times. I’ve been trying to explain to people for so long that there are so many mitigating circumstances surrounding a players success (or lack of) at a club. Plenty of ‘PL proven’ players have joined other PL clubs and failed miserably. That’s why I pay no stock to the whole notion of someone being PL proven.

3 Likes

I reckon you would get bored after 10.

Foreign fans get their panties in way more of a twist over Premier league proven thing than English and British fans do.

We get it the league is fairly dog shit atm all we’re really talking about when we use that term is simple shit like being used to country, speaking the language, knowing the opposition and being familiar with away grounds etc.

I’d honestly ban the term if I could just so I didn’t have to read counter arguments about butthurt La Liga/Bundesliga fans about how much more technical their leagues are when no one is really arguing the fact in the first place.

2 Likes

Yeah it’s over hyped by the media, that may use the premier league proven tag. Besides it’s a legitimate thing, someone might do better in La Liga than the Premier League. It’s all about different styles and settling in anyway

Often, ‘PL proven’ ends up meaning ‘best mates woth the main UK football journalists’.

In either instance, has there been a more PL proven player than Waybe Rooney? Anyways I digress…

PL proven is a fair enough concept. Any time a foreigner turns up, when they’re shit it’s blamed on “the pace of the league” and “getting up to speed” (as has been done in this very thread :slight_smile:)

I think the reality is very few players are actually incapable of playing in the PL if they’re proven in another top league and often when they seem that way, I think it’s more the culture of the country than the football in the league they can’t adjust to. But you’re better off getting a great player that takes 3+ months to get up to speed, than a mediocre player that is already up to speed.

And it probably doesn’t mean much at Arsenal because Arsenal proven isn’t exactly the same as PL proven. What we expect players to do is not what Mourinho expects players to do. If we’d signed Schneiderlin he’d probably have had as much adjusting to do under Wenger as Xhaka does.

PL proven is too simplistic. Torres is a perfect example of a PL proven player absolutely flopping and there’s plenty of others where a player doesn’t suit a system or a player just being a 1 season wonder. Debuchy and Schneiderlin were PL proven and didn’t do as well when they moved to big clubs.

Ramsey in 13/14 was better than Kante last year but since then has disappointed. Players will have times when they are in form and times when they aren’t.

1 Like

Guess who got sent off against Portugal :sweat_smile:

1 Like

Good. We’ll need him nice and fresh for Southampton.

He got sent off in added time :joy:

1 Like

For a second yellow, in a needless tackle… while winning 2 nil.