Analysis of Granit Xhaka's Final 3rd Performance

At full-time, I was pretty frustrated with Granit Xhaka’s performance. I have been pretty frustrated with him for a month or so now. So much so that I was thinking about ways to try and get him out of the team for situations like yesterday’s that frustrated me.

Is it time to try replacing Xhaka with Trossard?

When I have these types of situations I do sometimes wonder was this a trick of memory and a player that I already have a bit of an agenda with just having certain moments stick into my mind. With that sticking in my head I wanted to go back with a bit of a clear mind and re-watch Xhaka’s final third performances.

The first clip here he gets the ball in the left half space, with plenty of space to pick his head up and try a pass.

This is a pretty good low hard cross to the top of the box. This ultimately gets called a foul on Eddie Nketiah when I think it should have been a no call coming together. I think that was a pretty good early cross and not by any means a bad decision, there wasn’t anything else really on it almost turned into something very dangerous.

The next one is a similar type situation.

Here Ake again reads the ball well and heads away the cross. I don’t really mind this play either. This is a low hard cross that is hard to handle as a defender and there isn’t another obvious action beyond recycling the ball.

Here is a good combination play between him and Martinelli.

Martinelli got the ball on the wing, and played a well weighted pass into the feet of Xhaka making a run along the edge of the box. He tries to play the cut back to Odegaard but Dias does well to get his back foot on the ball to block it for a corner. A good run and good intention for Xhaka here.

The next one Xhaka doesn’t do anything special but also keeps play flowing.

This is a combination play where he finds a pocket of space and plays a nice one touch pass to Odegaard. Odegaard then plays one of his best passes of the night.

This was ultimatley offside but was one of the best moments that Arsenal had in the match. Bukayo Saka’s touch lets him down here but man I do wish he had trusted his right foot and smashed this.

This is a play that I really like. Zinchenko takes up the wide position playing with Nketiah who has swaped spots with Martinelli with Xhaka sagging into space. Martinelli has taken up a spot on the edge of the box and Xhaka plays a very good pass into him.

He fizes this one in to Martinelli who makes a great wall pass flick for Eddie Nketiah, who could have been in but his touches bounces up and he uses his arm to control it. Another pretty nice piece of combination play here, another fine-margin situation that could have turned into a dangerous situation for Arsenal.

The next one might be his best play of the night.

Arsenal lose the ball in the final third but Xhaka is covering the space well. He makes a good tackle to win the ball back and moves the ball into space in semi-transition.

After winning the ball he finds some space and is able to pick out the run of Nketiah with a great chipped through ball. This is what ultimately assists the penalty call that Arsenal gets.

Ultimately this first half was good. I don’t really see too much here that makes me think he made an error or did anything obviously wrong. To the contrary honestly, this is some very good play and he looked pretty lively on the re-watch. It is a good reminder that our memory isn’t always the best especially when you have a basis (which I will readily admit I do have when it comes to Xhaka).

On to the second half which was not quite as strong.

These next two are really I think the ones that stuck in people’s minds. I know that they stuck in mine and really colored how I saw things work.

In this first one Odegaard and Jorginho play through City’s 4 on 2 press in midfield and get Arsenal into semi-transition, with solid attacking numbers.

Xhaka sees the run of Nketiah but just absolutely gets the weight of the pass wrong. It ends up out of play for a goal kick. This was a very frustrating moment, I think I threw something when I watched because the weight of the pass was so obviously wrong.

Just a couple of minutes later (after City’s second goal) he is in a similar situation but makes a different decision.

In this situation he doesn’t make a pass, instead, he looks to shoot waiting for lane to open as Walker slides out towards Martinelli. In the end the chance to shoot never really materialized, with Dias doing really well to recover and close off the opening.

His deeked shot does get Dias on the ground but as he tries to beat him he loses the ball. It is a bummer that the chance never turned into anything but this was also some very good desperation defending.

As we get to the end of the match, there are less involvements with Xhaka as Zinchenko moves further forward. In this next chance that is exactly who he is looking for.

Here he helps Arsenal build out from the back and after some play with Leandro Trossard and Olexander Zinchenko breaks down it is recycled out to him. Here he looks to play it back into Zinchenko, the pass is blocked but does ultimately fall to the Arsenal man and leads to Trossard looking for a penalty in the box.

And that is it. That is Xhaka in the final third. It was an okay outing with a couple very nice plays including one that is a pre-assist for a penalty and one where he plays a great pass into Martinelli that almost creates a chance. That is balanced out by a couple of really bad plays.

It is not the worst outing but it does highlight that on a day where we needed to be close to perfect the couple half chances to create something big went begging (not just from Xhaka) and that was the margin in this match.

He will have a part to play if Arsenal want to get back in control of the title race and I feel better having rewatched this with some of my confidence restored that he can make the plays even if he doesn’t make all of them (but no one does).