Arsenal: Has Granit Xhaka become the best passer we have?

Arsenal have lately prided themselves on superb passing midfielders. That said, is the shoe-in Mesut Ozil threatened by Granit Xhaka?

Arsenal fans, in general, don’t like Granit Xhaka, and find him woefully inadequate to the job he is asked to do. I’ve made it my life’s calling to combat this hogwash with cold hard proof, but I accept that when it comes to Gooners, my abilities are limited.

Which is why I’m going for the whole shebang here. Rather than tip-toe around the issue, let’s dig into the numbers and see if there might be a case to make for Granit Xhaka being the best passer that the Gunners have.

Now, before we start, there is no way to prove one way or the other that he is. There is no statistic for ‘meaningful passes,’ so all we can do is put all the numbers together and decide which ones carry more weight. That said. let’s get into the numbers.

Here are the cold hard stats. Brace yourself, because if you have an agenda, this might not fit it. Granit Xhaka currently completes 86.5% of his passes. That is equal to Jack Wilshere, greater than Aaron Ramsey (85%) and also equal to the crowned king, Mesut Ozil.

There are some who may want to say that Xhaka’s percentage gets bolstered because he passes backwards so much, but among his three nearest competitors, those listed above and adding Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Xhaka passes forward more than anyone else.

That’s right, the Swiss midfielder passes 64% of his balls forward. The closest to that is a tie between Ozil and Wilshere, both with 61%. Ramsey only passes forward 58% of the time and Mkhitaryan a mere 54%.

Granit Xhaka, obviously has the best long pass completion as well, as his pinpoint accuracy can be seen on any given match day. What’s amazing is that Xhaka completes 70% of his long balls or, if you take Europa League alone, he completes 85% of those long balls.

Not just that, but if you want to talk about end product, then that’s no problem either. He has seven assists this year, just one behind Ozil.

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Obviously Ozil gets the upper hand in chances created. That goes without saying, as Ozil is the best in the world at that. But there is more to the passing spectrum than just chances created, and another huge part of that spectrum is a part that Xhaka has mastered – the art of the long pass.

Again, while we can’t classify passes as ‘meaningful’ or ‘meaningless’ based on numbers alone, we can say that, without a shadow of a doubt, key passes are meaningful. I would also argue that forward passes are more or less always meaningful, to a lesser degree.

But long balls should fall in that category too, as we have seen how they stretch the play for an Arsenal team that doesn’t have a lot of stretching abilities.

That being the case, no one in the Premier League is more effective with the longball than Xhaka. Eric Dier and Nemaja Matic are the closest, but Xhaka holds the torch in the same way that Ozil is just head of De Bruyne and Fabregas in chances created.

It’s a dead heat. However, I’m not so biased to argue that a long ball is as useful as a key pass. That said, this is taken into account by the fact that Ozil creates two less chances than Xhaka completes longballs per 90 minutes.

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Still, as I made clear at the start of the article, I don’t think stats can dethrone Ozil. But the point is simply this: Granit Xhaka is a superb passer, one of the best in England. He passes like so few other players out there. To sell him short and not acknowledge his facilities is a discredit to yourself more than it is to him.

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