Arsenal: Stop selling all your damn captain material

Arsenal lack leadership on the pitch, and they have for awhile, so why are we selling all the players who have this seemingly illusive trait?

I never liked the way Arsene Wenger handled his Arsenal captains. It turned out to be the kiss of death in the later years, as he’d give it to whatever player was oldest and more times than not, they’d leave soon after.

Then Unai Emery comes in and makes a pretty odd decision to have five captains – Laurent Koscielny, Petr Cech, Mesut Ozil, Granit Xhaka and Aaron Ramsey. Of course, Jack Wilshere may well have been in that mix too, had he not been sold.

Aside from Ozil (which felt more like an olive branch), all of those guys have captain material in them. Petr Cech was the leader from the bench, Koscielny and Xhaka on the pitch, and Ramsey encapsulating all the things you could ever want in a captain.

Cech is retiring, Ramsey was forced to leave and I’m still boiling over that every time I have to think about it, Koscielny is probably on his way out, if not this year than absolutely next.

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And now we want to sell Granit Xhaka too?

Guess what? The captaincy does matter, despite what Arsenal have been doing with it lately. It does. This is the guy who is the manager on the pitch, the figurehead of the team, the spirit of the club. You can’t just hand it to a new signing who doesn’t understand the essence of the club.

Some believe that Sokratis would be a good candidate, and I wouldn’t disagree, but he’s still a bit of a fresh face here and, let’s be honest, he has a temper sometimes. While I don’t mind an animated captain, Sokratis is… on the far edge of that.

Selling Granit Xhaka is stupid for a lot of reasons, but add another to the list – because we’re running out of captain material, something we already had far too little of. Xhaka sees more than any other player on the pitch, he isn’t afraid to speak up, and he’s got enough of a temper and that it’s an attractive quality, not detractive.

First Ramsey, now Xhaka. Let’s just clear out all the guys that bleed for this club and start completely over without a captain, how about that?

Okay, I’ll calm down now. Xhaka hasn’t been sold yet. But you don’t want to see what will happen to my writing if he does. Hell, I don’t either.