Granit Xhaka picked up his eighth yellow card of the season against Lincoln.
While the challenge in the 23rd minute wasn’t exactly clean, if anyone else on the pitch had made it, especially that early on, they would have gotten away with it. As Lincoln proved.
It’s yet another example of how stats don’t tell the whole story. Xhaka’s not a dirty player but if you look at his record, you’d think otherwise.
Granit Xhaka’s last 6 games:
Red vs. Burnley
Yellow vs. Bayern
Yellow vs. Sutton
Yellow vs. Liverpool
Yellow vs. Bayern
Yellow vs. Lincoln pic.twitter.com/eqkJ6CrRbm— Squawka Football (@Squawka) March 11, 2017
Before Arsene Wenger wisely took the Switzerland international off in the 61st minute presumably in order to prevent him from potentially getting a second yellow and another ban, you know, since Anthony Taylor loves giving those out, Xhaka was having a decent game.
He completed 43/47 passes, won two aerial challenges, three tackles and took four corners – the most out of any player on the pitch. However, he only had a 25% accuracy rate for said corners, which he really needs to work on if he’s going to keep getting trusted with them.
It’s difficult to tell what Arsene Wenger will do about the card situation as the midfielder clearly already has his card marked – literally. While some of his tackles are silly, they’re not terrible and, as previously mentioned, no worse than what many players get away with game after game. He’s a defensive midfielder for goodness sake, how is he supposed to be defensive if every time he puts a foot in, he’s penalised?
Stats via Who Scored.