Granit Xhaka Is Sunderland's Survival Insurance as the Premier League's Second-Season Test Bites

SUNDERLAND — There's a particular kind of tired that only September in the Premier League produces, and Sunderland are feeling all of it. Five games, four points, and a fixture list that served up Arsenal and Manchester City back-to-back. The Black Cats lost both. And yet — three goals at the Etihad, a first European night in 53 years, and a captain dragging a young squad through it all — this doesn't feel like a team sliding toward trouble. It feels like a team being tempered by it.

The five-game ledger tells its own story. Opening day brought a heartbreaking 2-1 defeat at newly promoted Ipswich Town, Jack Clarke's 90th-minute winner snatching the points. The response was immediate: a 1-0 home win over Fulham, Wilson Isidor the scorer. Then a 1-1 draw at Brentford, where Sunderland's lineup was unchanged and the point was earned the hard way. Then the step up in class: a 2-0 home defeat to Arsenal — Enzo Le Fée's penalty saved by David Raya, Bruno Guimarães' 58th-minute screamer, Bukayo Saka's late penalty, Reinildo Mandava sent off — and finally the 5-3 shootout at Manchester City, where Brian Brobbey's hat-trick still wasn't enough. One win, one draw, three defeats. Welcome to the second season.

Which is where Granit Xhaka comes in. The Swiss international wears the armband, and in the words of his manager, he is the standard. "It's important (Xhaka's return) because he sets the tone," Régis Le Bris said earlier this year. "He's a good player, first of all. So in this position, the number six, when you have a player of this quality, it helps definitely. He's really composed. For the confidence of the young lads, I think it's important. He can set the tone as well, the standards. So he's so important for us." Defender Dan Ballard put it more bluntly: "We've missed him of late and we've had our toughest run of the season. To have a natural leader like that come into the team is great."

But this isn't some serene veteran presence — Xhaka still burns. Against Arsenal he picked up a yellow card for what VAVEL described as "losing his head for a moment," the captain's fury boiling over as the game slipped away. And yet on the same night he was Sunderland's most composed passer, accurate throughout in a performance rated among the team's best. That's Xhaka in miniature: the fire and the metronome, sometimes in the same five minutes. For a young squad learning what the Premier League demands, there might be no better tutor — the man who shows you both the standard and the fury it takes to reach it.

The context around him matters. This is Sunderland's second season back in the top flight — last season was the return, the first since 2016-17 — and the league has had a full year to study Le Bris's young side. Add a European campaign to the load: on September 16, Enzo Le Fée's 66th-minute penalty beat AZ Alkmaar 1-0 at the Stadium of Light, the club's first continental fixture in 53 years, with goalkeeper Robin Roefs making crucial late saves to preserve it. Four days earlier, Le Fée had watched Raya save his penalty against Arsenal — then stepped up again and buried this one. That redemption arc, from Saturday despair to Wednesday history, is the character in this squad. The challenge now is doing it twice a week without the league form falling off a cliff.

Which brings us to Saturday. Brighton visit the Stadium of Light on October 10 — 3pm BST, Premier League Round 6 — and it is exactly the kind of fixture that decides survival. Fabian Hürzeler's Seagulls are flying at the right end of the table, and they have recent happy memories of Wearside: a 1-0 win at the Stadium of Light last March, after a goalless draw the previous December. Sunderland's season will not be decided at the Etihad, where even three goals earned nothing. It will be decided on afternoons like this one, at home, against teams they have to take points from.

Xhaka has won league titles and played at World Cups; he is the one man in that dressing room who knows what a season looks like from both ends. The message he'll be drilling all week is the simple one: the teams that stay up are the teams that win their home games. Four points from five is not a crisis — but it is a warning. Saturday against Brighton is where the survival fight actually starts, and Sunderland's captain intends to lead it from the front.