Sunderland midfielder Granit Xhaka has enjoyed a stellar debut campaign on Wearside.

Former Sunderland defender Wayne Bridge has suggested that Granit Xhaka would be a “massive miss” for the Black Cats if he were to leave the club anytime soon.

The Swiss veteran has made a notable impact since arriving at the Stadium of Light last summer, taking on the captain’s armband and helping to bolster his new side’s Premier League survival hopes with a series of commanding performances in the centre of the park.

At the time, many onlookers questioned Xhaka’s decision to swap guaranteed Champions League football with Bayer Leverkusen for an anticipated relegation battle with Sunderland, but the player himself has spoken openly about his desire to embrace a fresh challenge on Wearside in the latter stages of his career, while also opening up on the immediate affinity he felt with the North East.

Looking back on his move to the Stadium of Light during a recent interview with BBC Sport, the 33-year-old said: “People were laughing at me, to be honest. Even the closest part of my friends said to me, ‘Why are you going back?’ They said, ‘Yeah, okay, you can go back to Premier League, but why are you going back to Sunderland?’

“I said, ‘Because I love the challenge’. And I had the feeling I needed a new challenge. After two years in Germany, where we won, in the first year, nearly everything - unbeaten in the Bundesliga, won the cup, lost the final in the Europa League, which was very painful. I just had the feeling with the owner [Kyril Louis-Dreyfus] when I spoke with them, with the club, with the coach, this is the right club for me.

“Because the people are very humble. It's a small city, where I grew up - I see exactly myself, how I grew up. And I just wanted to come back to the reality that I believed is the right direction for myself, for my family, and I'm just happy that everything at the moment went how I was looking for.”

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What has Wayne Bridge said about Sunderland captain Granit Xhaka?

And it is within the context of Xhaka’s talismanic turn that Bridge was quizzed on the possibility of him sealing a shock exit from Sunderland at the end of the season.

Speaking to 10bet, the former full-back - who made 10 appearances for the Black Cats during his own playing career - was asked whether he could foresee any club engineering a swoop for Xhaka this summer, to which he responded: “I’m not sure. Xhaka has made such a great impact up there and probably still has a couple of years left there. I don’t think they’ll want to let him go – why would they?

“He’s obviously one of their main players and he’s made a massive impact. The rest of the team seem to have the spirit where they’re all doing well together. If he leaves, it would be a massive miss for them. Sunderland have been brilliant this season. They would have been a lot of people’s favourites to go straight back down, but they’ve been excellent and Xhaka has been instrumental in that.”

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