Arteta must rue not signing Arsenal’s loan “genius”

The last few years have been something of a whirlwind for Arsenal.

Mikel Arteta has worked wonders by taking a club that were struggling on and off the pitch and turning them into a lean-mean-winning machine.

Things might be going a little wrong in terms of injuries at the moment, but it would be hard to dispute that, when all fit, the squad has come on leaps and bounds since their first Premier League title charge in the 22/23 campaign.

That said, it still feels as if the club have failed to adequately replace Granit Xhaka in the season and a bit since he left, made worse by the fact that they didn’t sign a former loanee who’s since won comparisons to the Swiss international and is having an unreal season.

Xhaka’s Arsenal career

Arsenal signed Xhaka from Bundesliga outfit Borussia Mönchengladbach for around £30m in the summer of 2016, and while he certainly wasn’t a bad player in his early campaigns at the club, he wasn’t one that got the fans off their feet either.

Moreover, the midfield general had a reputation for losing his head at times, and this, combined with a period in which the club were seriously struggling under Unai Emery, led to what was undoubtedly his lowest moment in an Arsenal shirt.

He was substituted in what was a dire performance against Crystal Palace, but as he was walking off, the fans started to boo him, which led to him throwing the captain’s armband and shirt to the floor in disgust.

It was an event that probably should have signalled the end of his time at the Emirates, but when Arteta arrived at the club a few months later, he convinced the Swiss star to stay, and somehow, over the next few seasons, he managed to win the fans back onside.

In fact, his last two campaigns with the team were so impressive that both the home and away support began to sing his name, and in his final game with the club, which saw him score a brace, he was serenaded off the pitch, in what has to be one of the best comeback stories in recent years.

He moved to Bayer Leverkusen for around £21m in the summer of 2023 – where he’d go on to win the Bundesliga – and while he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, it would be fair to say his brand of tenacious all-action box-to-box play hasn’t been recreated by anyone at the club since.

However, a player who did spend a couple of seasons on loan at Arsenal has since been compared to Xhaka.

The former Arsenal player like Xhaka

When it comes to loan players, Arsenal have had mixed luck in recent seasons, as neither Raheem Sterling nor Neto have impressed this season, but then Martin Odegaard did reasonably well in his six-month stint at the end of the 20/21 campaign.

Falling more on the side of Odegaard would be Dani Ceballos, who first joined the club on a season-long loan from Real Madrid at the start of the 19/20 season, when Emery was still in charge, and then rejoined the following year under Arteta.

During his two seasons with the club, the Spaniard was a useful player in the squad, as while he wasn’t a consistent game-changer, he did make 77 appearances, in which he scored two goals and provided five assists.

Moreover, he also scored the 91st-minute winner against Sheffield United in the quarter-final of the FA Cup the season the club won it for the 14th time, so you could argue his loans were worth it for that moment alone.

However, upon the end of his second deal, the midfielder returned to Real Madrid, where he continued to play a bit part role, until this season’s Champions League, that is.

So far, the 28-year-old has made eight appearances in the competition, four of which have been starts, picked up an assist against Manchester City in the first leg of their play-off and was so good in the second that there are now reports that Florentino Perez wants him to be offered a new deal.

On top of all of that, he’s also been likened to Xhaka by FBref, which compares players in similar positions in the Champions League this season, then creates a list of the ten most comparable players for each one, and, in this instance, has concluded that the Swiss international is the sixth most similar midfielder to the Spanish dynamo.

The best way to see where this comparison has come from is to look at the underlying metrics in which the pair rank closely, including, but not limited to, non-penalty expected goals plus assists, expected assists, goal-creating actions, passing accuracy, passes into the penalty area and more, all per 90.

Ultimately, given how well Arsenal have progressed over the last few seasons, there is a strong argument that they made the right choice not signing Ceballos, but with the ambitions they have to win it all, we can’t help but imagine he’d be an incredibly helpful addition to the squad, especially now he’s so similar to Xhaha.