Personal reasons could be a driving factor in Granit Xhaka’s prospective return to the Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen with the Premier League veteran facing an uncertain future at Arsenal.
You only have to look at the struggles of Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool this season to realise the importance of strengthening from a position of existing strength, and what can happen if you allow a squad to grow stale.
If Arsenal are to continue to develop under Mikel Arteta, there can be no room for the sort of sentimentality that beset the final few years of the Arsene Wenger era.
Xhaka has played the best football of his Gunners career this season. But at the age of 30, and with his 31st birthday approaching, Arteta may be right to take a leaf out of the Sir Alex Ferguson playbook and move on from a key player before the decline sets in.
Is Granit Xhaka leaving Arsenal?
According to the Daily Mail, Xhaka is one of the players Arsenal would consider selling this summer. Kieran Tierney and Folarin Balogun – outstanding on loan at Reims – could also go.
Long-time admirers Bayer Leverkusen are interested again, per Sky Sports. Director Simon Rolfes, meanwhile, is refusing to rule out a summer swoop for the 113-time Switzerland international.
Xhaka spent four years at Borussia Monchengladbach before joining Arsenal in a £35 million deal back in 2016. And Kicker say that Xhaka’s wife, who he met during his stint at Borussia Park, has wanted to return to Germany for quite a while, something which could be a decisive factor as the midfielder weighs up his options.
Xhaka is currently under contract at Arsenal until 2024. The Gunners may jump at the opportunity to cash in on one of their longest-serving players before losing him on a free transfer. A number of potential replacements appear to have been lined up as well; Brighton’s Moises Caicedo and West Ham United skipper Declan Rice among them.
“My hunch, now, is (Rice joins) Arsenal,” former England international Danny Murphy said recently.
“Deep down, when you’re young and from a certain area, you might want to stay around your family. Maybe that Arsenal thing has become much more attractive.”
“(Rice) probably looks at that midfield and thinks; ‘I could get in that team comfortably’.”
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