1 hour ago
34
Granit Xhaka won't be playing against former club Arsenal this weekend and Sunderland manager Régis Le Bris has confirmed exactly why
Now a fan favourite at Sunderland, Granit Xhaka was once a constant in the Arsenal midfield, with the two sides set to face off in the Premier League this weekend.
Arsenal have been exemplary this season and are looking increasingly likely to win their first title in over 20 years. At the heart of their rise was Swiss international Xhaka, who was at the north London club from 2016 to 2023. He came close to winning the title with the Gunners but ended up moving on to Bayer Leverkusen.
The lure of the Premier League was too much for Xhaka, signing with Sunderland after they were promoted from the Championship at the end of last season. He's already played against his former team once, in November, but it's been made clear he won't be playing this time.
FOLLOW OUR ARSENAL FB PAGE! Latest Gunners news, analysis and much more via our dedicated Facebook page
Sunderland gaffer Régis Le Bris has confirmed that Xhaka will play no part against his former team at the Emirates Stadium because of an injury.
"There is no major update at the minute but his presence around the team is still really strong," Le Bris said. "We look forward to having the best version of him back soon."
Xhaka has been very vocal about his admiration for Mikel Arteta in the past, praising his management style. "I will never forget the first day Mikel came in," Xhaka told the Athletic. "At the training ground, we had a big room and there were some chairs in there, but the chairs were everywhere - chaos.
"He took all the people who were working in the building into this room and said: ‘Guys, from the outside, you look like this. Chaos’. So everyone takes a chair and puts it in the right place and he says: 'I want you to be like this every day'.
"You think 'wow', he’s started already with these standards - the first day. After that, he was building our mentality, standards in training, pre-training, activation, recovery.
"He brought people in who did a great job. It was unbelievable to work with him because he saw football in a different way."
While Xhaka had fond words to say about Arteta, his time at Arsenal wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. In 2019, he clashed with fans after a 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace and came close to leaving the club. He appeared to swear at the Arsenal crowd when he was booed off following a substitution and was subsequently stripped of his captaincy by Unai Emery.
It looks to all intents and purposes that he would be heading out the Emirates exit door – then Arteta arrived.
Speaking about when he nearly left, Xhaka added: "When Mikel came, he had a very open conversation with myself. My luggage was already done (packed). I was ready to leave. I already had a contract on the table from another football club.
"Mikel had two conversations with me and he convinced me to stay, to give me another chance. He wanted to show me that I am in the right place. From this day, I just had the feeling that every word he told me in this first conversation, everything was exactly like he said. That’s why I say that in 2019, when Mikel came, he changed me completely — as a human being, on the pitch, outside the pitch."
Speaking about the Palace incident, he said: "I had barely begun to move when I heard the boos. And it was not just a few guys in the corner - it was a lot of people. I was shocked. I had never experienced anything like this. When I got close to the tunnel, I looked up at the fans sitting there - and this is the part that I will always remember.
"When I close my eyes now, I can still see their faces. I can see their anger. It's not that they don't like me. No, it's different. This is hate. Pure hate. I am really not exaggerating this. To feel that level of hatred and disrespect, I wouldn't want it for my worst enemy. Still to this day, if we have lost, I hate walking those last metres to the tunnel, because I still recognise the faces. The same people are sitting there. So now, I just keep my head down. I lived through that nightmare once. I don't ever want to do it again."
English (US) ·