How Do You Fill A Xhaka-Shaped Hole In Sunderland’s Team?

Sunderland’s recent back-to-back defeats against Arsenal and Liverpool have triggered a familiar wave of online invective, yet inside the club the mood is calmer, measured and rooted in a blunt reality: until Granit Xhaka returns, the Black Cats are trying to complete a puzzle with its most important piece missing.

Head coach Régis Le Bris has guided the promoted side to a position where survival is all but mathematically secured, but the past fortnight has highlighted how thin the margin becomes when the Swiss midfielder is unavailable. Xhaka, signed from Bayer Leverkusen last summer, has not featured since the draw at Brentford on 1 February; in the four league fixtures since, Sunderland have collected a single point and been outscored 9-2.

The drop-off is no coincidence. Internally, staff point to Xhaka’s twin influence: on the ball he leads the team in passes into the final third (7.8 per 90) and through-balls (2.1), while off it he operates as a de-facto on-field co-ordinator, cajoling team-mates and shuffling the defensive block. Without him, Le Bris has been forced to reconfigure both shape and personnel, most notably by deploying right-back Trai Hume as an auxiliary holding midfielder to compensate for lost ballast.

“Granit’s leadership qualities alone are simply irreplaceable,” a senior club source told this newspaper. “He directs traffic, demands standards and strikes fear into opponents. Then there’s what he brings on the pitch—world-class passing, tempo control, creativity. You don’t replace that with a 21-year-old who’s still learning the game.”

The numbers support the eye-test. In the nine league matches Xhaka has started, Sunderland average 1.9 points and 55 per cent possession; in the five he has missed, those figures fall to 0.6 and 43 per cent. More strikingly, the side’s pass-completion rate into opposition territory dips by 11 per cent when he is absent, a gap no other midfielder in the squad comes close to bridging.

Le Bris explored internal solutions before the window closed. An approach for Stoke’s Josh Laurent was considered too expensive, while a loan enquiry for Manchester City’s Kalvin Phillips never advanced. Instead, the head coach has leaned on youth: 19-year-old Dan Neil has been asked to play higher up the pitch as a pseudo-No. 8, and 21-year-old Jobe Bellingham has alternated between mezzala and shuttler roles. Both have shown flashes—Neil’s clipped pass for Jack Clarke’s winner against Fulham stands out—but neither possesses Xhaka’s blend of metronomic passing and defensive IQ.

The ripple effect is felt across the pitch. Without Xhaka’s ability to receive under pressure and switch play, centre-backs Luke O’Nien and Jenson Seelt are forced into longer, riskier distribution, contributing to a 25 per cent rise in turnovers inside Sunderland’s own half over the last four games. Full-backs are also pinned deeper, reducing the width that once allowed wide men Patrick Roberts and Luis Semedo to isolate defenders.

Equally problematic is the loss of Xhaka’s dark-arts deterrent. Opponents have begun to press Sunderland’s midfield with impunity; Liverpool’s Alexis Mac Allister and Curtis Jones took 46 touches in the final third last Wednesday, the most by any visiting duo at the Stadium of Light this season. “Teams sense the vulnerability,” the source added. “When Granit’s there, they think twice. Without him, they step straight through.”

Sports-science staff are reluctant to set a definitive return date, but the club is targeting the home fixture against Wolves on 30 March for his re-introduction. Xhaka has resumed partial training, though medics are managing the flare-up of a chronic knee irritation that was exacerbated on international duty. The interim plan is to split minutes between Neil and Hume, with Le Bris stressing pragmatism over philosophy. “We can’t ask a 19-year-old to be Granit Xhaka,” the Frenchman said after the Liverpool loss. “We can only ask him to be the best version of himself within a structure that protects him.”

That structure now includes a subtle shift to a 4-1-4-1 out of possession, designed to funnel play into wide areas where Sunderland feel more comfortable doubling up. The tweak yielded a disciplined first-half display against Arsenal and, despite the eventual 3-0 scoreline, limited Liverpool to 0.9 expected goals before the 75th-minute counter-attack that sealed defeat.

Longer term, recruitment chief Kristjaan Speakman is scouring the market for a younger prototype who can learn under Xhaka while eventually inheriting the role. RB Salzburg’s 20-year-old Mali international Diadie Samassékou has been watched repeatedly, though any deal would likely wait until summer. For now, the club accepts the current squad must survive the final ten fixtures without its talisman.

Survival, however, remains the baseline. With 36 points already banked and the bottom three averaging 0.8 points per game, Sunderland need only three more to be mathematically safe—an achievement that would represent the second-quickest top-flight rescue in their modern history. Anything beyond that, Le Bris insists, is “a bonus earned by lads who took us from the Championship to dreaming again.”

Whether those dreams include a late-season surge may depend less on tactics or mentality than on the simple calculus of one man’s fitness. As the Stadium of Light waits, the question lingers: how do you fill a Xhaka-shaped hole? The honest answer, inside the training ground at least, is you don’t—you endure until he walks back through the door.

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