Second fiddle
You don’t spend upwards of £30m on a midfielder without expecting big things of them. Xhaka’s strengths and weaknesses are obvious – his vision and passing is fantastic, he’s tall and strong, and he has a thunderbolt shot but on the other hand he’s not the quickest and his tackling is at times horrific.
For Elneny, things are a little more subtle, and while it’s probably unfair to call him a jack of all trades and master of none, he does have a more rounded, if less showstopping, set of attributes. Football is a sport that often rewards players with only one outstanding skills (hello Podolski’s left peg!) over those who can do everything well.
Before the turn of the year, he was an unused substitute as much as he got any pitch time, and even then, he only started half of the ten games he did appear in. Pretty much all of January and February was derailed by his country’s extended run in the African Cup of Nations, and by the time he had cleared a niggle of an injury up following the tournament, Elneny made just two further starts in 2016-17.
Going into this season, it was hard to see where he might fit.
Xhaka has become a more or less nailed on starter, and Ramsey seems to have cemented his claim to the position alongside the Swiss.