Arsenal: Granit Xhaka has learned invaluable new trick

Arsenal got off to a slow start against Chelsea, helped on by Granit Xhaka’s sloppiness, but the Swiss midfielder seems to have picked up an invaluable new trick.

Arsenal played two very similar halves against Chelsea, where they weathered about 15-20 minutes at the onset and then struck back and controlled the rest of the halves. But that first Chelsea onslaught as the game started had one characteristic that was not getting me very warm or fuzzy.

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And that was the sloppiness from Granit Xhaka. He was pressured early on and, as it tends to do, this lead to some wayward passes and giveaways. When the game started to slow and the pressure dwindled, he still looked rather rushed for a bit, as if it was in his head that he was being pressured, despite it not actually happening.

That stopped really quickly though and all of a sudden, he was in control. Like nothing had ever happened.

As many of you know, I am a massive Xhaka supporter and apologist and will always believe that he is a world beater in the making. But I see his flaws when they rear their ugly head and I can’t recall a time where he started so poorly but adjusted so quickly when the game changed.

In fact, Xhaka adjusted so quickly that Chelsea had to make a change at half to bring on Tiemoue Bakayoko to help balance out the midfield, which gave Xhaka even more time on the ball which meant even more of an impact.

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Last year I was impressed by how quickly Xhaka weeded out the silly, impetuous fouls that would earn him multi-colored cards and give away precarious set pieces. By the end of the season, he was hardly fouling at all, let alone even leaving his feet.

He has shown an affinity to learn quickly and I do believe we may be seeing another transitional point now, as he learns how to adjust to the flow of the game.

It was inspiring seeing Xhaka go from a liability to a midfield boss in the span of about five minutes. Nobody made more tackles on the entire pitch than Xhaka. That includes N’Golo Kante. The only guy that matched him was the human tank Sead Kolasinac.

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Xhaka acclimated the the match, which is oftentimes hard for players that are slow and deliberate like him to do. I said the same of Alex Iwobi. This is a promising step and certainly something to keep an eye on.