{"id":78349,"date":"2025-11-08T05:24:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T05:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=78349"},"modified":"2025-11-08T05:24:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T05:24:33","slug":"arteta-praises-xhaka-ahead-of-arsenal-sunderland-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/11\/08\/arteta-praises-xhaka-ahead-of-arsenal-sunderland-clash\/","title":{"rendered":"Arteta Praises Xhaka Ahead of Arsenal-Sunderland Clash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Samuel Adeola<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has hailed former captain Granit Xhaka, saying the Swiss midfielder made him \u201ca better coach\u201d as the Gunners prepare to face Sunderland on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Xhaka, 33, returned to the Premier League in July to join newly promoted Sunderland after two years at Bayer Leverkusen.<\/p>\n<p>He previously spent seven years at Arsenal, where Arteta rebuilt his confidence after a fallout with fans in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI loved every minute we spent together,\u201d Arteta said on Friday. \u201cHe made me a better coach and helped us grow as a team. I\u2019ll always be grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Arteta also praised Sunderland\u2019s progress and Xhaka\u2019s strong influence, noting the club\u2019s \u201cimpressive management and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Arsenal, six points clear of Manchester City, have won 10 straight matches in all competitions but Arteta insists the title race remains open.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know our strengths and where we must improve,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Samuel Adeola Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has hailed former captain Granit Xhaka, saying the Swiss midfielder made him \u201ca better coach\u201d as the Gunners prepare to face Sunderland on Saturday. Xhaka, 33, returned to the Premier League in July to join newly promoted Sunderland after two years at Bayer Leverkusen. He previously spent seven [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":78350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78349"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78352,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78349\/revisions\/78352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}