Arsenal and Granit Xhaka: Do not make Shkodran Mustafi mistake

It is looking increasingly likely that Arsenal will cut bait with Granit Xhaka. If they do, they must not make the same mistake as they did with Shkodran Mustafi, hold out for an unreasonable price, and miss the chance to sell.

Bar an encouraging initial run of performances when he first arrived, forming an aggressive, formidable partnership with Laurent Koscielny at the heart of the Arsenal defence, it was quite evident that Shkodran Mustafi would never be good enough for an elite Premier League side.

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The central defender possessed many of the tools you would want in a centre-back to flourish, but he could rarely put them all together and produce on the pitch, his mental mistakes relentlessly catching up to him and undermining his overall efficacy.

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It has since been revealed that Arsenal have been keen to offload their £35 million signing for some time. This summer, David Ornstein confirmed that Unai Emery had seen enough after the Europa League final and was keen to sell Mustafi, something the club has been trying to do in almost every transfer window since his arrival in 2016:

"“After the Europa League final, Unai Emery who had always put his faith in Mustafi despite a number of high-profile mistakes, decided that enough was enough with him. And he is no longer in favour of keeping him – so he could be sold. Arsenal have tried to sell him pretty much every window since they signed him.”"

And yet, despite this evident desire to sell, Mustafi still remains in north London. The reason is quite obvious: the Gunners thrust an utterly unreasonable price tag on an underperforming player in a desperate attempt to recoup as much of the wasted £35 million they splashed on him in the first place, eventually losing the chance to sell in any capacity.

This season, in Granit Xhaka, the club is now dealing with a very similar situation to the Mustafi mess. It seems increasingly clear that the disgraced captain will leave, with Newcastle United the latest team to be linked with a possible move, and a transfer could happen as early as this January transfer window.

Any exit, however, requires Arsenal sanctioning a sale, and as we saw with Mustafi, they are painfully stubborn regarding the value of their players, especially if they egregiously overpaid in the first place, still demanding a comparable fee after years of subpar performances that only depreciate the players’ value.

Like with Mustafi, Xhaka cost £35 million. The horribly naive Gunners will convince themselves that he is still worth that much on the open market. But Xhaka is not worth that much. In reality, anything north of £20 or 25 million would be a rather impressive sale. If Arsenal holding out for the £35 million they paid, as they did with Mustafi, they will be waiting for a very long time indeed.

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Throughout it all, Mustafi unhinged the first team with poor performances and now sits on the bench eating into the wage budget with his near £100,000-a-week salary. It is wasted spending, all because the club was unable to be humble enough to admit their mistake and cut bait. They now cannot make the same mistake with Xhaka, should a sale be where this ends.

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