Go and check his rating from stat-based mediums. He got an 8.0 on SofaScore. Xhaka is one of those “Trust your eyes” case. Weirdly, many have been on his case for the Fulham instead of going on about how important he is and such, showing that goddamn chart about how influential he is.
For me, from what I saw this season, he definitely has improved(due to finally growing some balls and relying on Torreira) but I think this is his ceiling. There’s a cap on him and that’s on his lack of awareness or possibly footballing brains, which is integral to be a top, top #6 or #8.
La Liga is full of #6 and #8, young or experienced that have the ability to play for Arsenal. I hope the Raul and Unai influence directs our search there.
There’s always a howler in him, be that a shit pass or just a braindead lack of defensive awareness which leads to a goalscoring chance for the other team. I just don’t ever feel secure with him in our XI, especially against the better sides.
There is a reason he tends to be the one player who is blatantly targeted by other teams. His lack of mobility and/or slowness to trap and release the ball under pressure is a weakness that is repeatedly targeted.
He is precisely the sort of player we need to upgrade massively in order to push on. The fact he starts when fit tells you a lot about the lack of quality we have in his position.
His decision making is utterly poor, does not matter that he can a play a good game now and then and that he heas certain qualities ( long ball, free kicks) when he is on the pitch there is always a solid chance he will gift the oppostion.
Agreed. Most disappointing fact about the game was how we ended up in a deadlock. Xhaka didn’t play bad but he gifted them a chance that neither team could create on their own.
Once too many times that error today. Brief uplift in his form has come and gone. Never known a more liable midfielder give up so many goals. Just fuck off.
I think that says more about our shambles of a team if we’re gonna rue a loss where we didn’t even come close to scoring (let alone winning) to a 9th place team down to a one person mistake that lead to a goal.
well one mistake can = one goal and that is all you need to lose if you don’t score… today our lack of creativity and any semblance of offensive fluidity cost us more than bad defense, at least in terms of the way the game played out… problem is, our team has the odd (or six) gigantic mistake in them every game, so if we don’t score multiple goals, it is really hard for us to rack up points right now.
All you’ve done is essentially expand on my point.
You are right (mathematically too), we needed to score multiple goals to win today (your words).
My sentiment from the team’s performance today was that with that performance we were never looking like scoring. So take away Xhaka’s fuck up and on the basis of how we played, we would have got a 0-0 at best. Don’t know about you but I still wouldn’t have been satisfied.
Yeah I was just pointing out that when you have such a mistake-riden defense it puts a lot fo pressure on the offensive weapons to convert b/c otherwise you pay… .anyway, our squad is a bit of a mess and performances have been a bit on the wane.
Well, it was a boring ass match. A bunch of failed attempts to build sonething from both teams. Frankly, anything created had more to do with mistakes than creativity.
