Granit Xhaka believes that Arsenal have had a good season all things considered. Well, not all things. The last few games of the Premier League for example. They shouldn’t be considered.
The Swiss midfielder was speaking after the 4-1 defeat to Chelsea in the Europa League final, and bemoaned the fact the Gunners couldn’t win the game and get back into next season’s Champions League, but in general he thinks the team deserves some credit.
“I think we had a good season – if you take off the five last games in the Premier League,” he said after admitting the loss to the London rivals hurt.
“We had a second chance to come back and go to the Champions League but if you don’t take your chances, you will stay in the Europa League.
“You can say a lot now but it is not the time to explain why and what happens. We lost today. I don’t want to speak about the last five weeks or 10 weeks.
“I think today was a big chance for us, we didn’t take it.”
The 26 year old was asked what Unai Emery said following the defeat.
“Nothing,” he replied. “He is disappointed of course. Him, the players, nobody speaks in the dressing room.
“I don’t know what is the plan now.”
As for his own future, when asked if he wanted to stay he declared, “Me? I have a contract here.”
Convincing.
Arsenal 1-4 Chelsea – player ratings
Makes a change from the ‘we’d be top of the 12 month league’
This attitude just sums it all up. Probably why we stopped playing once we hit wenger’s last points tally.
Nothing matters unless you see it through to the finish.
This is the attitude of a loser.
In terms of pursuit of excellence, let’s compare :
During Man City’s celebrations of winning the league, a game in which Sterling scored three goals, Pep was telling him about what he could have done better. Although I think Pep should be sent to a hospital for obsessive disorder, it shows the sharp contrast.
How does Emery tell Xhaka to run faster? he’s a casualty of his own pace time and time again. He is obsolete at the top level
Well said.
I’ve had a good relationship record, if you take off the last 5 marriages.
I’d be really thin if I didn’t have those last 5 pints a day.
What Xhaka said sums the current malaise engulfing Arsenal — ‘We’ve had a good season, if you take off the last five games.’ During the project youth era, even though that batch of players we had weren’t ever good enough to win a title. They genuinely did aim to win it each season. They bought into Wenger’s father like persona and tried to deliver his vision of winning the league in that total football pass and move style. They never did accomplish that feat, but in trying to fulfill the lofy ambition of Premier League glory, they always managed to… Read more »
For most of the years that we achieved the top 4, we actually had the 3rd or 4th largest wage bill. We needed to sell star players after moving to the Emirates to fund our wage bill which was large based on Wenger’s youth strategy to tie the youngsters with long expensive contracts (I remember Denilson earning 3m per year) in order to build the future team. After not succeeding we had to take huge loses because no one would pay their wages based on their true value. Financially based, top 4 was not a miracle.
If you take off his lack of mobility, lack of defensive awareness and mental lapses, he is a good midfielder.
Xhaka Can’t.
Haha. Xhaka’s just made himself into a Chuck Norris.
We would’ve won the league if we were the only team who were awarded points for a win as well. Close.
If you ignore X number of games we won every game. Nice…
What a load of horse shit
Jesus fuck
At times it’s better to just keep quite
The club would do well to keep him away from interviews.
Away from interviews and football
One of the players I’d sell to raise funds for a squad rebuilding.
As useful as he is he’s probably one of the few players that could bring in any money so you’re probably right
One of a number of players I’d give away to get off the wage bill and replace with a promoted under 23 academy player.
Nobody will buy him
Gazidis might. I wondered why he’d want Mustafi, then realised he was probably a statDNA signing. Xhaka is too, if I’m not mistaken.
We could encourage him to try and ‘prove’ his horrendous big data experiment is actually genius.
He should be sold immediately just for this interview
I’m actually stunned, what a ridiculous thing to say. This mentality sums up the entire club from top to bottom.
He’s not a bright spark is he? He can kick a ball really hard. That is all
And he can let himself in and out of his parents’ house without waiting for his big brother to turn up.
I have been unable to see why he was brought to the Emirates in the first place and can see no reason why he should stay a moment longer.
If he thinks this was an acceptable season, provided you ignore all the games where we capitulated to not just better teams but, in fact, any opposition, then he is not of the right mindset for being a competitive sportsman.
Bye bye Granit!
Makes you wonder what targets this team was given at the beginning of the season
No target
Relegation survival
Target: qualify for europe (oops. Forgot to specify for which clmpetition). Dont ask for a raise (we can save money).
It is a good season compared to the next with the inevitable sack of Emery in december. Hope I’am wrong.
This kind of mentality is one of the reasons we are in this mess in the first place. Finishing fifth, trophyless and out of UCL for the third season running is by no means a good season even if we omit those last 5 PL games (in which case it wouldn’t be a season anymore, would it?). If one of our captain thinks we had a good season, in the day we lost a final to one of our main rival, that tells you a lot about the rest of the team’s mentality.
Seriously, we need to rid ourselves of perennial losers like this bloke. Is he actually serious? I thought this was an arseblog joke. This plank actually said this stuff! Out loud. Get rid quick.
What a loser! Should be the first on the cull list.
The most disconcerting thing in that statement is the ‘I have a contract here’. Last night the game before the goals felt like an end of season friendly. I think the players at our club have discovered a great pay day for no responsibility. We have a full team of players who need to leave. He is definitely one of them. You only consider putting up with rumour spinning players if they’re worth keeping, eg. Cesc, Vieira…
This has been the problem for the last decade! “I have a contract here” on several million pounds thanks very much so I don’t need to try any more and then when the contract is up I’ll move somewhere else for free and screw several more million out of them for doing sod all too!
Fuck off, and then fuck off a bit more, do they think we want to hear this shit today, they had a chance to do their talking on the pitch, so today they should do the decent thing and keep their mouths shut.
He is one of the many players we need to ship out while their stock is still relatively good and recoup some money. i think we need to restock our squad with academy players and some hungry players from lower leagues across Europe. somebody put “moneyball”on DVD on for Raul! We could make a good team out of so called lesser players , look what Leicester did a few years ago. its possible!
If Ramsey was fit, he and Torreira showed how dynamic a midfield partnership they could be for us in the same formation. It’s not the formation, it’s the personnel playing it. Xhaka is a diagonal long ball bot. He completed 0 passes into either Lacazette or Aubameyang. Not a single fucking one. I don’t give a fuck if we finish 6th next season as long as I don’t have to sit through another season of Granite Fucking Xhaka at the heart of our midfield.
Well said.
Ramsey paired Xhaka to beat Chelsea in the FA cup final 2 years ago and the two dominated the midfield.
I won the lottery last week if don’t count the 5 numbers that didn’t come up.
We can have a full trend of memes based on his statement…
this reminds me of Evra’s comments a few years back when he said ”we would have won the league if we won more games”.
Lol. Piss off.
The last comment really annoyed me and a part of me wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, him misinterpreting the question as ‘Do you think you are good enough to be here?’ or ‘Do you plan on going elsewhere?’. However his response of ‘I have a contract here?’, just insinuates his belief he deserves to play somewhere better. If that’s his attitude, and I don’t say this often, he should be sold this summer. What a stupid interview.
Oh yeah, because those games didn’t mean anything did they? We had everything to play for (including last night) oh… what a muppet…..
i’m 38. I lost everything I had when I was 33. Now I am broke. But I’ve had a good life if you forget the last 5 years
If anyone offers us around the £40million mark for Xhaka this summer? Then I hope he’s packing his bags.
Decent enough player, and he certainly wouldn’t be top of the list of players I’d like us to move on, but I wouldn’t be disappointed if we sold him either.
I’d let him go for a tenner and a happy meal for the kids.
Rambo, Rambo, Rambo. The moment he pulled up in Napoli our season was stuffed. Not the slightest doubt in my mind that if we’d kept him fit we would have finished top 4. We need to clear out the dross like Mustafi, Lichtsteiner etc and bring on promising youngsters like Willock and Smith-Rowe.
Anthony where’s Joshua?
What kind of a competitor thinks in these terms? If the part where we sucked didn’t happen we’d be good. Is that his personal mantra as well? If I didn’t grab the guy and give him a clear penalty in the box then overall I had a really great performance.
Games make a season, and the last 5 games are what eventually made the season a failure. That’s like Usain Bolt saying ” I ran a good race. I might have fell on my face at the end and crawled over the line in 5th place, but overall it was a good race”.
Anyway, Xhaka can fuck off if the club can get some decent money for him
I think he should just fuck off.
I think that sums up the squad we have today, content with mediocrity!
Because they are mostly mediocre players to be fair
Can we take off the last 5 weeks.. is that a new rule?
**face in palm**
That’s why it’s known as the business end of the season and they’re the games that matter. How can so many players go missing in a bright red shirt. I think we should ask Adidas to do our third kit in camouflage to make it easier for them.
how is this different from Mustafi’s comments (90% good, 10% bad). this sums up the mentality of these guys. Embarassing!
At times, they feel like they are being controlled by the same person. Not a very bright one, I must say.
It’s true.
It’s a fact.
Don’t turn him into a scape goat.
I was a pretty law-abiding guy. Until I killed a man
This guy is a meme
No one speaks in the dressing room – WHAT? I can understand disappointment keeping them quiet but I can’t imagine Tony Adams saying nothing after 1 let alone 5 of those games.
We are in danger of following Everton, Blackburn, Villa, Newcastle (and Spuds for 50 years) who were all big money clubs now languishing in the mediocrity.
Kroenke is not the owner required at this stage.
Not just Tony.
Why not just say: “we let the fans down. We bottled the league and Europa finals. We’re embarrassed and ashamed. We have no one to blame but ourselves.”
WTF!!!!!! Like.. is he fucking serious?!?
Nope you you almost had it but you decided to let it slip away from your guys hand.
We need something tangible we are tired of coming back every season without nothing to show for it
What if we took away the last 5 sessions on fort nite?
Last night when the final whistle went, Xhaka was already going about giving hugs to Chelsea players. Ffs even if you don’t care about losing the biggest match for Arsenal in a long time, put up an act for all the fans who went through heaven and hell getting there to support their team.
Auba is a useless flat-track bully. Another luxury player we got in him..
Only saving grace is you called the scum average which is admirable
Blah Blah Blah Arggghhh….
Average midfielder with a shocking attitude
This is somebody that many fans think should be our captain haha! Says it all really
Just a silly question but who is going to benefit from the 2 extras spots available due to Chelsea 4th position and EL win or/and Liverpool 2nd in the league and CL champions?
We won the game if Chelski didn’t score 4 goals yesterday night. Rotten phrase rolling off the mouth of a “professional”. Why didn’t he just shut the f*ck up?!
Cech, during one of the interviews before the game said at Arsenal there’s no pressure to win, unlike at Chelsea. Looking at it now, dude was spot on.
I am so mad still. Mad at what this club is becoming under that fucking American clown.
You can shut up.
We needed one game to qualify for CL and you boys couldn’t hold it together enough to manage that.
I wonder what the result would have been if we had played Frankfurt in the final.
Exactly the problem. Those 5 matches were in our control but we blew away every opportunity repeatedly afforded to us to secure CL. To think a goal from Auba against BHA would have sealed 4th. A win against Wolves (without Mustafi) would have sealed 3rd ahead of Chelsea but we conspired to leak 3 goals with a back 4 (Sokratis and Koscielny) I said it before that the league was the more controlled way to get into CL but we blew it. Relying on a knock out tournament was always going to carry risk even with the gaffer’s good track… Read more »
As far as Granit is concern, I thought he played decent but we have lacked capability in midfield. Particularly with the loss (for free) of Ramsey, we do not have a full deck of cards with the potentially very good Guendouzi and Torreira. We lack a player who can control the ball for us in midfield and carry it up field. The likes of Viera (through physical), or Santi (Technical) or Diaby (both but alas injury issues) is missing from our current set up. Arguably rather than just ‘bottle’ we actually lack technical players in the squad. There are very… Read more »
your remarkable penalty against brighton disqualifies you from an opinion
I’m sick and tired of this STUPID MENTALITY, what is ‘we had a good season’ what will Sterling say if he finished 5th? Or Salah? What kind of dead mentality is this??? I’m in shock! Oh Wenger what did you do to these lads!!
Well Cech said it all “Wenger’s a gentleman, as much as he hates to lose he remains a gentleman…” is this where we are now??? “Oh well we lost, let’s find consolation”??? THIS CLUB IS A DISGRACE!