Chelsea have reached a full verbal agreement on personal terms with Granit Xhaka, and have opened talks with Sunderland over a fee reported to be in the region of €30m, with new boss Xabi Alonso driving the pursuit of a midfielder he wants to anchor his rebuild. The interest is itself a statement. Xhaka is 33, a Switzerland international, and only last summer rebuilt his standing at Sunderland, where he has logged 3,298 minutes across 39 appearances this season as one of the side's most relied-upon figures. A move now would carry obvious weight on both ends: Sunderland would lose a leader they reshaped their midfield around, and Chelsea would be betting a meaningful fee on a player entering his mid-thirties. That makes this the right moment to examine exactly what Alonso believes he is buying, and whether the evidence supports the conviction.
The profile in numbers
Across all competitions this season Xhaka logged 39 appearances and 3,298 minutes, returning 2 goals and 6 assists and that distribution tells the story, with the six assists all arriving in his 34 Premier League games and his solitary club goal also coming in the league, the other strike landing for Switzerland at the World Cup. The output sits behind the passing. The pizza wheel, ranking him against 96 defensive and central midfielders, is heavily skewed toward distribution: 99th percentile for both final-third passes (11.32 per 90) and long balls (7.82 per 90 — his long-range distribution), with overall passes (55.69 per 90) at the 84th percentile and touches (70.36 per 90, a proxy for how much play runs through him) at the 78th. The defensive and physical slices are strong without being elite — 89th for duel win rate (60.47 per 90), 88th for clearances, 84th for recoveries, 82nd for aerial win percentage. Where the profile turns ordinary is the goal threat. His 41 key passes and 8 big chances created underline that the creativity is genuine even as the finishing is negligible. The form line reads 7.22 across his last 14 (WWDDWW, five goal involvements).
Role and positioning
Across his last 30 appearances, Xhaka has been deployed almost entirely as a deep-lying midfielder, but with a consistent rightward tilt: he started 33.3% at right defensive midfield, another 23.3% at right centre midfield, and 16.7% on the left of the defensive line, with a further 13.3% in a central midfield berth, 6.7% wider on the left, and 3.3% as a nominal defensive midfielder. The pattern is telling. This is not a chameleon shuttling between attack and defence; it is a player anchored to the base of midfield, with the variation coming from which side of the pivot he occupies rather than how high he plays. The recurring right-sided positioning suggests a system that asks him to build from a slightly angled deep slot, where his left foot opens up the pitch diagonally. Even the moments listed as "central midfield" sit close to the screen rather than the final third. In short, he is a fixed deep-build specialist whose role shifts laterally, not vertically.
The trajectory
For a deep-lying midfielder whose value sits in distribution, ball-winning and metronomic involvement, the three-season arc reads as a steady, slightly settling line rather than a decline. In 2023/2024 Xhaka posted a 7.58 average rating across 33 apps and 2,830 minutes, with 1.40 key passes per 90 but lighter defensive numbers (0.89 tackles, 0.54 interceptions per 90). The 2024/2025 campaign was his heaviest workload — 46 apps, 3,956 minutes, a 7.38 rating — and his most complete: creativity held at 1.43 key passes per 90 while his tackling jumped to 1.62 per 90. This season the rating eases to 7.17 over 36 apps and 3,028 minutes, with key passes dipping to 1.10 per 90, but his ball-winning has actually sharpened — 1.55 tackles and a career-best 0.92 interceptions per 90. His assist rate has stayed remarkably consistent, from 0.16 to 0.18 per 90. The drift in rating is real but marginal, and it comes alongside more defensive activity, not less, so this is a role evolving toward the destructive side at 33, not a midfielder fading. The availability — three seasons all clearing 2,800 minutes — underlines the durability.
Standout displays
Xhaka's best Sunderland nights this season fit the picture of a metronome who lifts the whole side: an 8.7 at home to Everton in the Premier League, where he scored, and an 8.5 away to Nottingham Forest, again in the league, where he laid on an assist. Those displays sit comfortably above his 7.17 league average and underline the creative output behind his six assists — the goal-scoring spike is the rarer event, given he managed just one league goal across 34 appearances. There is a higher ceiling on international duty, too: an 8.4 for Switzerland away to Sweden in World Cup qualifying, complete with a goal, a reminder that the same passing range and physical presence travel between club and country rather than belonging to either alone.
The verdict
What Xhaka offers is a midfield organiser of genuine elite standard in the things that matter to him: 11.32 final-third passes per 90 and 7.82 long balls both rank in the 99th percentile, and he wins 60.47 percent of his duels while recovering 5.58 balls per game. He is a controller and a distributor first, with six assists adding end-product rather than defining it; nobody should buy him to score. The fit is a side that wants its tempo set from deep and trusts a left foot to dictate angles, which is precisely the profile a possession-led coach values. The caveats deserve weight, though. At 33 his legs are a finite asset, his ratings have drifted from 7.58 to 7.17 across three seasons, and the discipline that comes with his aggression has long been a live risk. The honest read: a high-floor metronome whose ceiling is influence, not numbers, and whose value depends on the system built around him.
