Arsenal: Anything you can do, Granit Xhaka can do better

Arsenal witnessed another fantastic all-around match out of Granit Xhaka, but this one may be one of his most versatile of the sort we’ve ever seen.

For such a lop-sided scoreline, you’d have expected that the Arsenal players would have been conclusively dominant. While that wasn’t necessarily the case, there were still some fantastic individual performances that powered this team to victory.

No single performance was more positive than Granit Xhaka‘s. And no, not because he just did the things he usually does so well. It wasn’t even his passing or his control that took center stage in this performance, it was how well he did so many different things well. Some of those things can be backed up with numbers, some you just have to look at the game itself.

Xhaka’s goal wasn’t a fluke. He made the right run into the box and put it away with a finish that Aubameyang would probably have struggled with. And that wasn’t his only positive run into the box. He nearly had another, had it not been for some fantastic last minute defending from Fulham, but again, it stemmed from a superb late run into the box from Xhaka.

You may have noticed that there was no No. 10 in this formation. With Iwobi and Aubameyang out wide, it fell to Xhaka and Guendouzi to share the complete midfield, defensive and attacking, and they both did quite well, with Xhaka truly going above and beyond his normal faculties to truly dominate.

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These were Ramsey-esque runs, finding himself in deadly positions. I mean, he should have had the first two goals of the game. That’s saying something from a deep midfielder. Clearly he understood that more was being asked of him and he adjusted accordingly.

And, given that he is now also a fill-in centerback, he didn’t shirk the defensive duties either, as he led the team in winning the ball back, ranking tops in both tackles and interceptions, some of which were rather crucial.

Don’t let me distract from the fact that he was still a fantastic passer, though. he created just as many chances as Alex Iwobi (3) and was just one behind our font of chances, Sead Kolasinac.

Yes, he was loose a couple of times. But Xhaka did everything. Literally everything. He was an everything midfielder, defending, attacking, scoring, running, creating, he did it all.

So yeah, we can exist without a No. 10. Just ask Xhaka to do more and, as always, he will do it. He keeps proving to have more and more talents in development that he naturally won’t get credit for, but lo and behold, look what he can do.