Ahead of Wednesday’s Carabao Cup clash against Liverpool, Unai Emery gave an update on Arsenal‘s controversial captain, Granit Xhaka. The Swiss international acted out when jeers greeted his substitution on Sunday’s draw with Crystal Palace.
This lead to speculation about the midfielder’s future as club captain as well as his very future in north London.
Unai Emery: Granit Xhaka ‘Devastated’ Over Jeers
‘Devastated and Sad’
The Arsenal head coach told the media:
“It’s not easy for him and for the team. He is now devastated, devastated and sad. We spoke yesterday and on Sunday night I also spoke. This morning, he trained as normal with the group but he is devastated and he is sad about the situation.
“His commitment with the club is a great commitment every time. He wants to help. His behaviour was perfect in training, with the group and with the club. He knows he was wrong. He was wrong and he feels it inside very deeply.
“Now, he is down. He is down and the most important thing now is that we look after him, his family. Look after him, the club, the team and also recover our best Granit Xhaka. After that wrong situation on Sunday, I have one challenge every time, for myself and also for the team and every and each player.”
Possible Apology
When asked if Granit Xhaka should apologise, Unai Emery said:
“Yes. I think when we make individual mistakes, we need to make apologies for the circumstances. I prefer to do that. We suggest to him to do it.
“But now, what is the response we are seeing? It’s that he is devastated and he is very down. First is to recover him, his feelings. We need our family, our friends, our supporters to support us, like us. Love us, everybody. He is not feeling that with the supporters.
“But we are speaking with him to first be calm and be close with his family and be close with us because we are your family too. Be close and we are going to try to be close with our supporters and this is a step, little-by-little, towards that in this moment.”
Future as Captain
Unai Emery was very non-committal when asked if Granit Xhaka would remain captain:
“We need to go step-by-step, step-by-step. First is to recover him, as a human, as a player. And then we are going to continue speaking about how we can improve, how we can continue in that way with him, with the team and with everybody.
“No, no, no – at the moment, I am not speaking and I don’t want to speak about that [whether he will remain captain]. The first is for him to recover. We cannot anticipate the circumstance because I we are going to play a match on Wednesday, on Saturday and I prefer to keep moving, taking each step, and taking the best decision possible.”
Future at the Club
Finally, reporters had questions for the head coach about Granit Xhaka’s future at Arsenal:
” We can maybe remind some similar situations in the past for players, and they came back. For example, I was speaking with Hector Bellerin and he said to me that he received some criticism three years ago at Emirates Stadium in one moment because people weren’t happy with his performance and then he came back.
“The most important is to keep moving ahead , working, improving and showing and transmitting to people that if one moment they don’t like him, to work to change that situation. I don’t know not today how it will be in the future, the most important for me is the present, with the future tomorrow.
“Tomorrow, for example, he is not in the group but I wasn’t thinking for him for that match [anyway] and he stays here and trains and we are going to let him recover as a person because he is down and then think about the team.”
Quotes from Arsenal.com
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