Arsenal: No midfield presence, but tell me Granit Xhaka isn’t missed

Arsenal struggled heavily against Vitoria, particularly in establishing a foothold in the midfield, but please tell me how Granit Xhaka isn’t missed.

Hi. It’s me again. Here to tell you that you’re all so dead wrong about Granit Xhaka. If you watched Arsenal flounder against Vitoria, you may already know where this is going. Or if you just looked at the subtitle, you could get a pretty good idea. But here’s the lowdown—Arsenal could not for the life of them establish any sort of presence in the midfield.

Unai Emery is mostly to blame for that. He stuck Dani Ceballos and Joe Willock, two talented midfielders, albeit guys that aren’t known for their presence, in the middle of the pitch, completed isolated.

What ensued was a steady progression of absolute failure. With so much overwhelming pressure coming from Vitoria once our midfield took possession, they had nothing to do but feed it back to the defense, who had no presence on the ball themselves.

This is not a recipe for success, and the Gunners should count themselves lucky that they scraped a point out of it.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 standout players from 1-0 victory over Everton
• 3 positives & negatives from Goodison Park victory
• Arsenal vs PSV preview: Prediction, team news & lineups
• 3 talking points from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• Mikel Arteta provides Gabriel Martinelli injury update after Everton win

This was a tactical set-up destined to fail from the start, but in seeing it fail, it only exacerbated things, and it made me realize, as I often do, how much better of we’d have been with Granit Xhaka in the midfield. Would it have solved everything? Of course not. I’m a reasonable man. But in moments like this midfield faced against Vitoria, when pressure is overwhelming and you have nowhere to go, you need a midfield with ideas. With weapons in his toolbox.

You may have noticed that Matteo Guendouzi established a bit of that presence when he came on, and that’s fantastic. He’s growing into a more active Xhaka-esque role himself. But I have never seen a match more primed for Xhaka’s picking.

For starters, Xhaka does not panic on the ball. He doesn’t lose possession. He doesn’t always take risks, but you know he can be counted on to keep the ball safe. And when worse comes to worse, he has an accurate enough longball to split defenses and find space no matter where it’s at on the pitch.

Neither Ceballos nor Willock had that ability against Vitoria. They lacked confidence on the ball, as they rightly should when five opposing players are bearing down on you, and they had nothing to do with the ball. Xhaka would have. The end.