Arsenal: Granit Xhaka Proving To Be Anything But Brainless

Arsenal has proven to be quite the beast for Granit Xhaka, but his calculated approach to improvement is going to bring about success.

Arsenal’s struggles this year have been numerous, but somewhere squashed in the middle of all of them is the concerns of Granit Xhaka’s disciplinary record. He has always had a knack for picking up fouls, cards and a combination of the two, but this year has brought that out to the forefront.

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Many are already calling for him to be shipped off and Arsene Wenger himself has said that the Swiss midfielder does not know how to tackle properly, but Xhaka has defiantly stood up for his abilities, saying he will not change for anyone.

Xhaka has finally spoken out about the criticism and, naturally, he has defended himself, but moreso, he has opened a window into the improvements he is trying to make and has proven to be as far from brainless, dirty and dumb as possible.

“I have analysed my sendings off and many off the fouls took place before the half way line, 60 to 70 meters from our goal. That’s too far away. That has to stop,” he said, as quoted by the Standard.

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So while people can look at his “I’m not changing!” statements and say he will never improve, what we are actually seeing is the opposite. He is saying that he won’t change the way he plays, but even he acknowledges that the poorly timed and placed tackles need to stop.

I have defended Xhaka from day one for numerous reasons, but the primary reason is that you can’t just pull a Manchester United and ditch a guy just because you saw a few things you didn’t like in his inaugural year. It’s all part of a process called improving. That’s why players keep moving to higher-tiered teams. Because they want to improve. They want to take that next step.

Not everyone makes it, and certainly not right away, but the ones that do all had that transitional period when they were taking that next step. Xhaka is in the midst of that. He has the intelligence, clearly, to continue to make improvements and anyone with his level of talent and willingness to learn has a leg up on the competition.

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I think we can all agree on that, at the very least. There is a massive level of talent here. And his approach to learning is very analytical and proactive. Hard to go wrong with that combination.