DiamondGooner wrote:aniym wrote:It will be strange entering a season without Xhaka. He's been a core player for a long time, over 40 appearances per season since 2016.
Strange?
You mean fkin ecstatic, pop bottle time.
I believe that team unity is actually much worse than what's been displayed, and that Xhaka was the glue holding together what little there was. Without him, Arteta will have lost a key ally in the dressing room, and it might not take much for things to boil over in the new season.
Xhaka's armband incident happened just a couple of weeks before Emery got the sack. We know Xhaka was planning to leave in the Jan window for Hertha. Emery had lost his ally and by extension, the support of the dressing room. When Arteta came in, he made it a priority to change his mind and quickly re-integrated into the team without him needing to make a public apology.
The Villarreal performance (both legs) tells me the team wasn't playing for him anymore. When Xhaka was injured for the 2nd leg, we barely even tried to score. Can't wait to see how things will be when fans are making themselves heard at the Emirates.