Arsenal: Selling Granit Xhaka abandons all sanity

Arsenal fans will be split on the rumors of Granit Xhaka’s exit, but make no mistake about it, you forfeit all sanity by selling the Swiss controller.

It was only a matter of time before a team came picking at Granit Xhaka. With every single Arsenal player seemingly on the table and Xhaka’s worth always such a (unnecessarily) contested thing, the idea seems simple enough – get the man who isn’t appreciated.

This time, it’s Inter, hoping to pry Xhaka away to Serie A where, by the way, he would be absolutely fantastic, given his skill set.

The Gunners have spent a long time build up Xhaka, and despite what you might hear from the haters, he has come a hell of a long way and now stands as one of our most consistent and reliable players. He’s the kind of guy that you can really feel when he is in the game.

And when he isn’t? You can feel it even more when he isn’t in the game. That’s the kind of difference that he makes.

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Granted, he’s not an “Emery guy,” and part of the idea is to get more Emery guys into the team so that he can start stamping his brand of football on this outfit, but that’s the thing. This was Xhaka’s best year. By far. He has been on a steady upward trajectory since arriving at the club and this was a culmination of some rougher years, with it logically following that it will only get better from here.

You don’t sell a guy when he’s in the midst of getting even better. Everyone knows that. And Xhaka is getting better and better. He’s also in a similar boat as Aaron Ramsey was in. This is the kind of guy that should be made captain, not shipped off to Italy.

It feels like we’d be compiling on the problem. Ramsey already left, he was our innovative midfield maestro. Xhaka is a different kind of maestro, but he’s still innovative, you get rid of him, who do you turn to next?

In case you didn’t notice, Matteo Guendouzi and Lucas Torreira, while both stellar in their own rights, don’t have the same abilities as Xhaka. No one on the team does. And while we’re talking about not selling players when they’re improving, how about not selling the only player who can do certain things at the club? That’s a great idea too.

It’s common sense not to sell Xhaka. He means to much. He does too much. He won’t be replaced easily. Don’t make this harder on ourselves.