If Arsenal fans were already nervous about the prospect of their first choice defence facing Liverpool’s attacking trident of Mo Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane, they must be positively terrified about what Liverpool’s front three might do to a second-string defence. Going into the Premier League’s match of the weekend, and what, for Arsenal, is the most serious test of their long unbeaten run since they lost the first two games of the season to Manchester City and Chelsea, there is every chance that Unai Emery will have to ‘make do and mend’ at the back. Currently, there are major injury doubts over seemingly every full-back at the club, with the exception of the veteran, Stephan Lichtsteiner, who was signed principally as cover for Hector Bellerin at right-back. What is even worse, many Arsenal fans would argue, is that there are no injury doubts over Shkodran Mustafi and Granit Xhaka.
Granit Xhaka and Shkodran Mustafi are Arsenal’s Weak Links
There was a perfect symmetry about Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Crystal Palace last weekend, which brought to an end their run of 11 straight wins, as both Mustafi and Xhaka gave away penalties, which Luka Milivojevic duly (and coolly) dispatched to score Palace’s first goals at home this season. Both penalties were, in the parlance of the game, very poor ones to give away. First, Mustafi clumsily brought down Cheikhou Kouyate just before half-time to give Palace the perfect fillip going into the break. Then, when it seemed that Xhaka’s free-kick and Aubameyang’s far-post finish (which should have been disallowed for a handball by Alexandre Lacazette beforehand) would give Arsenal another victory, Xhaka was completely bamboozled by Wilfried Zaha’s dancing feet and eventually (inevitably, one might say) brought him down.
To be fair to Xhaka, far better left-backs than him have been mesmerised into making such a mistake by Zaha. And of course, he was only filling in at left-back in the absence through injury of both Nacho Monreal and his deputy, Sead Kolašinac (although even Arsene Wenger himself expressed doubt last season that Kolašinac could play as an orthodox left-back rather than an attack-minded wingback). Such was Xhaka’s ineffectiveness in the role that, rather than play him there again, Emery might just risk rushing back Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who has only just returned from a broken leg, against Liverpool, rather than take the even greater risk of directly lining up Xhaka against Salah.
Unorthodox and Limited
The real problem for Xhaka is not that he is a fairly limited left-back. It is that, on all the evidence from his two and a bit seasons so far at Arsenal, he is not much of a midfielder either, and certainly no defensive midfielder, which is ostensibly what he was signed as when he joined for £35 million from Borussia Moenchengladbach in the summer of 2016. Cruelly dubbed by some of his own fans as a ‘Xhak of no trade’, the Swiss may have been a fixture in central midfield for Arsenal since his arrival but he has still evoked painful memories of another supposed holding midfielder, the Brazilian Denilson, in that he does not appear to excel at any of the three key skills of a midfielder: tackling, passing and scoring.
Just as Wenger cast doubt upon the ability of Kolašinac to play in a back four, so the Frenchman inadvertently provided the perfect critique of Xhaka in his first season when he claimed that the problem with the midfielder was that he didn’t know how to tackle. Even for the extraordinarily ragged, almost Nero-like last days of Wenger, that was a remarkable admission, in which he cast doubt not only upon Xhaka himself but upon his own judgment of a player. Unfortunately, it has proven to be a fairly accurate assessment, as Xhaka has not only demonstrated consistently that he is hardly Gilberto Silva or Patrick Viera when it comes to tackling opponents but, worse still, has often just stood and watched as opponents have run past him into the box and scored. The worst example came at Watford last season, and he was rightly singled out for it by furious TV pundits, but that was far from the only occasion on which he has been guilty of ball-watching.
To be fair to Xhaka, he has shown some ability to pass the ball and score goals (his free-kick goal against Palace was a fine one), but he has simply not done it consistently enough to merit his regular inclusion in the team.
Even Worse?
As for Mustafi, Xhaka’s fellow ethnic Albanian (although Mustafi represents Germany at international level rather than Switzerland), he is another player who, sadly, is increasingly cited as evidence of Wenger’s inability to spot and sign a good centre-back even if a peak-era Fabio Cannavaro had come up to him and said, “Sign me!” The oft-cited claim that ‘he must be good because he’s won the World Cup’ is an argument that collapses upon closer inspection. He has never been a regular for Germany, only ever a squad player, and his form since joining Arsenal has generally been so poor that he was completely omitted from the squad that Joachim Löw took to Russia to try and defend the trophy they had won in Brazil.
Rather like Xhaka, Mustafi is what might be described as an anti-utility player – bad (or at least not very good) at everything. He lacks both height and pace, which are usually two requisites for any self-respecting central defender, and worse still he appears unable to read the game well. As a result, he is reduced on a fairly regular basis to rugby-tackling opposing strikers to the ground either as they go past him or after they have already gone past him. And if he lets any of the Liverpool strikers go past him, they are so quick that he will never catch them, even if he attempts a rugby tackle.
Unai Emery has done incredibly well at Arsenal since he joined in the summer, with the important caveat that since playing Manchester City and Chelsea right at the start of the season (and losing to them both), he has not faced another high-quality (i.e. top six) team. Liverpool, who are currently in the top two (and they are only behind Manchester City on goal difference), will change all that and the fear among many Arsenal fans is that the presence of both Xhaka and Mustafi in the team, rather than the absence of Monreal and Bellerin, will prove the decisive factor.
If Xhaka and Mustafi are not the long-term answer in the key positions of central midfield and central defence (and after two fairly poor seasons from both of them, the likelihood is that they are not), then who can Emery replace them with? Arsenal are hardly awash with other options in those positions, at least until Laurent Koscielny returns from long-term injury and Mattéo Guendouzi develops into a top-class central midfielder. And in any case, after his red card against Blackpool in the midweek Carabao Cup match, Guendouzi is unavailable for the game against Liverpool. So, despite the protestations of Raul Sanllehi, Arsenal’s new ‘head of football’ (after the twin departures of both Wenger and former CEO Ivan Gazidis), that the club are unlikely to do any major business in the January transfer window, Emery may have to buy two new players.
Hard to Rectify
It is famously difficult to acquire good, let alone outstanding, players in the middle of the season, but if Arsenal’s attacking riches can keep them in the hunt for a Champions League place then Emery may persuade Sanllehi to allow him to strengthen at the back. And of course, if Arsenal are not still in the top four in January (they are currently just a point ahead of fifth-placed Spurs), then the need to buy will be even greater.
Among the options that might be available in January, for the right (i.e. ridiculously inflated) price, at centre-back are Brighton’s Lewis Dunk and Burnley’s James Tarkowski. Neither are latter-day Cannavaros, but they are both good enough to have been drafted into the England squad by Gareth Southgate. And a more outré option might be to try and persuade Gary Cahill, who is currently not in the first team at Chelsea, to follow Petr Cech to The Emirates. In midfield, the same lack of options exists, but Emery might just return to Spain to try and prise away from Valencia Geoffrey Kondogbia, the French-born midfielder who did so well against Arsenal for Monaco in the Champions League in 2015, and who, unlike Xhaka, can also play at left-back.
In the longer term, Emery can try to identify upgrades on those players. But whether in January or next summer, it seems almost certain, unless both players can undergo an amazing upsurge in form, that both Mustafi and Xhaka will have to go. They are Arsenal’s weakest links and need replacing if the Gunners are to have any chance of returning to the glorious, trophy-winning days under Wenger, George Graham and the other great Arsenal managers before them.
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