Arsenal: Granit Xhaka gets last laugh on N’Golo Kante

Arsenal’s new midfielder Granit Xhaka has been under the microscope all season while N’Golo Kante won player of the year, but guess who got the last laugh?

Arsenal and Chelsea have had polar opposite seasons, for the most part. And their contrary head-to-head results emphasize that. At the end of the year, the Blues absolutely stuck it to the Gunners in the Premier League table. There was no competition to be found.

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But in the last match up of the season, the FA Cup final, it was the unlikely Gunners who emerged victories and captured the last laugh.

Along with the polar opposite seasons, two players also managed to split opinions just like the two teams split results. On one end was PFA Player of the Year N’Golo Kante, who joined Chelsea and settled into his roamer, ball-winning role, helping the Blues to the title.

And the other side was Granit Xhaka, not at all like Kante. Xhaka the distrubtor, passer and poor, yet physically promising tackler. At the start of the season, it was clear who had the upper hand – the guy who had been here. Xhaka needed time to fit into his role and that was tough to do when he didn’t know what his role was. Nor did anyone, including Arsene Wenger.

And the red cards didn’t help. Nor did the penalties surrendered. But he did his part well enough to make a strong case for his future. That really came to fruition when he fell into the 3-4-3 formation and started to figure out what he was doing.

His passing excelled, as did his chance creation. His tackling improved and his disciplinary ‘problems’ started to shrink away. He even scored a couple goals to go with it. Through it all, more and more people started admitting that he wasn’t a waste of money.

But they still longed for someone like N’Golo Kante over the Swiss.

The FA Cup probably didn’t win over all that many people in the Xhaka vs Kante feud, mainly because they are still too starkly different players playing completely different roles. But it has to be noted that in a head to head battle, Xhaka was the supreme midfielder by a long shot. He made Kante look like a fidget spinner more than once.

And the best part about it is that Xhaka was essentially Arsenal’s only deep midfielder. Aaron Ramsey was having himself a day, which left Xhaka alone to man the tough stuff and he did it better than Kante and whoever was with him at that particular time.

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Of course, Xhaka was also the one who left with a winner’s medal. So there’s also that.