It’s been a while since Xhaka’s given anyone an opportunity to rant about him and the first time in months where there’s a serious reason to, it’s in a game where his passing brought us back into a game we then won. By that standard that’s an improvement.
Anyway while his weaknesses were obviously on show he was still a catalyst to that turnaround.
He may not be good enough overall but improvement in this system and under Arteta is clear to see.
We all know he lacks mobility and struggles defensively in quick intensity games. He has a lot of awareness issues and gets caught under pressure, we’ve all seen it many times. But when people start ridiculing what he DOES do well by saying it’s “Championship standard” it’s pretty clear what Cuellar said about Xhaka being a scapegoat on here was right.
Particularly true when some of the same people would have been jizzing their pants it if it was one of our darlings like Ramsey making those same passes after their awful defensive mistakes.
You replace Xhaka with Torreira/Guendouzi/AMN in that game and what you gain in defence you lose in attack. Can Ceballos do it as efficiently as Xhaka? Remains to be seen. We’ve also seen that it’s very difficult to sign a player that has every aspect we want in a central midfielder (defensive nous, pace, aggression, dynamism, passing range, forward runs, gas tank).
I’d love a player like Partey to dominate a physical battle like that and potentially orchestrate progressive attacks but it’s looking hard to land a player like that right now and we don’t even know if Partey has all that in his locker tbh.
This decision to retain and build around him is the ultimate reason we wont progress enough going forward.
Yeah he’s got a bit out of him. He’s overly investing though at the expense of midfield creativity and control of matches.
It’s annoying because shipping him out would probably find a willing market for him. Definite lack of outlook all round by Arteta on this.
The only solutions I can think of are giving Ceballos that position and signing one of the two names on everyones lips. Xhaka surely warrants a place in the squad though.