Arsenal urged to drop Xhaka? Should they?

Charlie Nicholas has urged Arsenal to drop Granit Xhaka for the coming matches, claiming they do not need a holding midfielder at home to such teams.

The Gunners host West Bromwich Albion on Monday night, and having seen all their top six rivals having won already this weekend, will be keen to follow suit.

Pressure is on our side to keep pace with the top of the table after a slow start to the campaign thus far, and Nicholas thinks we should be more aggressive in our approach at home against certain sides, and leaving Xhaka out the starting line-up would be his decision.

“I would consider leaving him out and say ‘I’m going to go with (Mesut) Ozil, (Aaron) Ramsey’,” Nicholas said.

“Do Arsenal seriously need a holding midfield player when you’re playing at home?

“They might say ‘well they’ll be too attack minded’. But they’re attack minded when they have a holding midfield player so I would leave Xhaka out.”

“You’d take the risk at home, Arsenal need to start getting a bit of momentum, getting the fans right behind them again,” added the Scot.

“They’ve actually got a run of games coming up that they have that opportunity now.

“Maybe Everton away (is their next big game), I know they’re not doing great but that’s an awkward one for Arsenal.

“They need the momentum, they need the belief in the fans to start coming through.”

Do Arsenal need to field a more attacking XI? Would Nicholas ever tell Chelsea to drop Kante in favour of more attacking players? Would Ozil really be worth including at CM when he is usually criticised for a lack of defensive work?

Pat J

Tags Arsenal charlie nicholas Ozil Xhaka

28 Comments

  1. xhaka has not been the brightest spark at arsenal but reading from his comments champagne charlie is definitely retarded

  2. Xhaka has been a poor signing thus far, and should be dropped, but when does Wenger EVER pick a team based on form?

    1. Xhaka has been one of Wenger’s best ever signings. He is one of the most creative midfielders in England and is an essential player in the team. Your comment together with Charlie Nicholas is utter nonsense.

      1. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,,, Whaaaaaat, have you ever watched Xhaka play football?
        He is not good in tight situations loses the ball when pressed can’t run can’t tackle and has zero dribbling ability, even Coquelin is a better dribbler than him. He is a mitigated failure, the mitigation being that given lots of time and space he can deliver a good long ball, the problem with that is when the ball is passed into areas of danger ie the opposition box they are easily intercepted so his most effective weapon is nullified because he has to pass the ball into areas which do not really hurt the opponents, kinda like Ray Wilkins used to do. Looks impressive but ineffective.

    2. When does Wenger EVER pick a teram based on form? 3 FA Cups and 2 Community shield trphies in 4 seasons. Just to help clear your brains.

  3. Yes drop Xhaka but not for the reasons Charlie Nicholas has given,, Drop him because he’s bloody useless. There are much better young players in the squad who should be given a chance now. Year after year we’ve seen Wenger treat these young players as fodder, he plays them in the early rounds of cup games and then discards them out on loan, very few of them ever getting a real chance to advance their career’s at Arsenal. Right now there is a very exciting group of talented young players at the club who could and should be pushed up into the senior ranks but the usual will happen, one or two will get a game in the early rounds of cup games then loaned out season after season until they just forgotten about and leave disillusioned never heard from again while he wastes resources on crap like Xhaka.

    1. I agree with the part that we should some of our youths a chance and its Bielik that I have in mind, he is tall and quite strong, calm on the ball.
      We bought him as a midfield player but he has educated as a CB in Arsenal and I don’t think that’s a barrier for him to move back to CM….

      Concerning Xhaka, maybe we haven’t gotten the perfect partner for him but he sometimes makes basic mistakes in his passing, but at least he has improved on his discpline….

    2. I think you will find that the current transfer and contract issues will mean Arsenal look to their youngsters rather than spend stupid money … Nelson maitland-niles Da silva Willock Nketiah etc shoukd be brought through and save 200mn in salaries and transfer fees

      1. They’re too young. Small teenagers, whippets. Beilik and Niles are the ones that look like they could cope, maybe Mavididi for a few games. The others would get rolled over.

        1. You have to give them a chance. If your good enough your old enough as they say. Monaco won the league championship last season with a bunch of young players nobody had even heard of.
          Arsene Wenger’s method year on year seems to me to be, use them for squad rotation then cast them aside, no matter whether they are any good or not. Where is Gideon Zalalem where is Jeff Raine Adelaide, Joel Campbell proved his worth but was still cut loose and treated like dirt. Gnabry saw what was going to happen to his career and cut, Akpoms progress is now downward and like many others before him will probably not make it as a professional football player unless he gets away from Wenger’s fairy kingdom

  4. I compare ourselves to other clubs and only sanchez would walk into man u Tottenham Chelsea Liverpool and man city teams

  5. Xhaka replacements are too underwhelming. you’d rather have him instead of Elneny and Coquelin or Ramsey and Wilshere in that position

    1. True, he is average but the problem is his replacements are more average.. Wenger always buys average, leaving classy players for his rivals to bolster their squads while we rot with no.4 and now gone even further to no.5

  6. We don’t really have any outstanding midfielders when it comes to controlling or defensive players. So, I think the way we play is more important than who players.

    If we play an aggressive pressing and disciplined game we at our best whether that is with Xhaka or not. If we don’t play disciplined and aggressive for 90 minutes, Xhaka is not the type of player to save us either.

    I guess it says enough that we don;t really have an overwhelmingly favorite DM or DM pairing. For a while I thought Ramsey-Xhaka might develop into a dominating pair but that is not going to happen. Elneny is under-rated IMO but who compliments him?

    I guess you could play Elneny on his own in the center against weaker opponents but that is a risk and would only work well if the whole teams presses and wins the ball nback in 10 seconds or less not uncle City or Barca. We can play that way but we have proven to have difficulty doing it more than once every now and again, not every week.

  7. Not sure dropping Xhaka is quite the solution he comes with a noteworthy price-tag which surely beforehand appropriate homework (on xhaka) will already ‘av been done. he’s young and im he’s still got time to express his talent with arsenal.

  8. All xhaka needs is a suitable partner, he’s done really well in some games and it’s not just by chance, xhaka is a *very good passer* of the ball, you can’t sweep that fact aside. Look at this guy, you’ll see he’s going to turn into Xabi Alonso. is Alonso fast?, is he strong?, does he tackle?, can he shoot from 30-35 yards. Give this guy a suitable partner and a little time.

  9. He’s wrong, because our next big game is WBrom not Eve. He’s also wrong about not needing a DM for home games, without a DM the CBs will start too high up the pitch.

  10. The same deluded fans that hyped Xhaka as the next Patrick Viera before Arsene signed him are the same fans bashing him. Total double standards.

    1. One thing for sure is that Wenger discourages shooting from outside the box, which is a strength of Xhaka. Why do we continually try to walk the ball into the net, when shooting if on target can lead to goals from rebounds?

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