Arsenal: Granit Xhaka Receives Needed Burst Of Good Faith

Arsenal midfielder Granit Xhaka is facing one hell of a week, but the good Arsene Wenger has done him a mighty service in rejuvenating the faith.

Granit Xhaka is currently on Olivier Giroud post-Monaco first leg levels of criticism. The new Arsenal midfielder was sent off for another poor tackle and faces a four match ban while simultaneously facing some rather bizarre racism fiasco that apparently happened at Heathrow Airport post-match.

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Needless to say, this isn’t what Arsene Wenger signed up for. Although he had to know that this came with the Swiss, who has made a habit of collecting cards in the past.

Wenger has hit straight to the point when speaking recently about Xhaka’s suspension.

“I think he’s not naturally a great tackler,” he said, via the Guardian. This is painfully true and probably stems more from his lack of pace and lack of fully knowing the speed of the Premier League yet.

But this is Arsene Wenger, who never goes to the press to say bad things about his players. He isn’t Jose Mourinho. Le Prof was clear about one thing in particular – there is no reason to doubt Xhaka’s presence at the club.

“In his decision making I think he is quite intelligent on the pitch,” he said, before adding that “He’s had a fantastic attitude since he arrived here on a daily basis.”

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Xhaka also completely denied the racism charges, which seem to be losing their steam.

All in all, as I have been saying this entire time, we have to cut Xhaka some slack. Wenger sees the problem and he is diagnosing the problem. That is the important thing. We have seen some pretty poor tackles from Xhaka but, to be fair, we are seeing them less frequently than when he first came over and was going to ground ever two minutes.

Xhaka has a massive part to play in Arsenal’s future. Arsene Wenger dropping the money alone proved that. Now that he has some learning to do, we just have to hang out and wait for that lesson to be completed.

Don’t forget, before Coquelin was this residential midfield wrecker (in a good way) he too had his problems of nasty fouls and poor tackles. There is always going to be an acclimation and Xhaka is in that process now.

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