When the news broke late on Saturday afternoon that Chelsea were rumoured to be interested in or had even agreed personal terms with Sunderland’s inspirational captain Granit Xhaka, my initial reaction read something like this…
“That’s it. Project destroyed if he moves on. He’s utterly irreplaceable and if he leaves the club, we haven’t got a cat in ****** ’s chance of replacing him adequately this summer”.
This particular train of thought was accompanied by a strange mixture of a hot surge of anger at the thought of the Swiss midfielder leaving and a sense of doom as I contemplated just what the Sunderland midfield might look like without a man whose single-season impact on Wearside is more or less without parallel in the modern era.
Two derby wins, a seventh-place finish and European qualification secured at the end of a season during which he managed to lift the standards to a previously unseen level in less than forty appearances? Yes. Godspeed and good luck in trying to bring in a player with that capability during this particular transfer window.
However, as I write, several hours have passed and Sunderland-related social media feeds are a hive of activity, with the rumours about contact between the clubs and potential fees — aided and abetted by the usual high-profile accounts — swirling.