Arsenal: Is Dennis Praet supposed to replace Granit Xhaka?

Arsenal seem to be on the brink of selling Granit Xhaka, so are we supposed to believe that Dennis Praet is the replacement? That won’t work.

Arsenal’s midfield was perhaps the second most reliable thing all year, behind the strikers. And it wasn’t even that far of a distance between the two. Granit Xhaka had a huge part to play in that as he finally won the approval of even some of the most hateful dissenters.

Granit Xhaka had mammoth expectations when he arrived, as he was supposed to fix over a decade of midfield problems. It set him up against the odds from the off, and he has only now crawled out of that cellar to where he is now today.

And now we want to sell him and replace him with… Dennis Praet? That’s what it’s looking like, anyway, as Praet is being hounded for while Xhaka is being tied to an exit.

Don’t get me wrong, Praet is a great player, I’d love to have him. But if you think you can swap him in where Xhaka left off, you’re dead wrong. You know why? Because that isn’t how it worked when Xhaka came in either.

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You want to talk about lofty expectations, Praet would be coming into a depleted side hoping to reset, and he will be asked to do the completely unappreciated work that Xhaka has already mastered, and he will be expected to do it, like Xhaka, from the start.

He’s just coming from Serie A, where the physicality is a lot tamer. Xhaka came from the Bundesliga, which, on the physicality scale, is higher than Italy.

Praet will not slide into that job and be like “yeah, you can’t tell the difference.” He’ll slide in and need a year or so to acclimate and time to improve, just like Xhaka had.

Are you all willing to give him a year while he figures stuff out and while we see, yet again, that Xhaka did a lot more than he got credit for? Something tells me you’re absolutely not ready to do that. Especially seeing as how some of y’all want Unai Emery ousted after just a year.

We have what we need in the midfield. A little augmentation would be nice, but the resources are in place. Going in and shuffling things up accomplishes so little while risking so much. It doesn’t make sense.