Arsenal: Jack Wilshere can’t skirt the blame from Tottenham loss

Arsenal’s blame game is ongoing, but if people want to harp on individual shortcomings, then Jack Wilshere needs to find his way into the criticism too.

Arsenal fans are a fickle bunch, and are always willing to play a fun round of the blame game, where they point fingers at who they think is most responsible for a loss. Most people will fall back on the same names they have been blaming all season, irregardless of how they actually performed.

For instance, the amount of blame flying in the face of Granit Xhaka has driven me batty. I get it, people don’t like who he is as a player, but if you want to try to say that he is most responsible for that Tottenham loss, then your bias is clogging your eyes.

The thing with a blame game is it has to have credibility, and anyone who wants to single out one guy while skirting away from blaming another party that is equally, if not more responsible, loses that credibility.

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For instance, how anyone can yap and yap about Xhaka but completely ignore that Jack Wilshere was underwhelming, is beyond me. Although it isn’t, really. People like Wilshere and they don’t like Xhaka.

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I hate to revisit the match and sound so negative, but in the interests of standing up for Xhaka and what he was able to do (which is quite a bit), I have to do an unpopular and uncomfortable thing and throw Wilshere under the bus for the sake of making a point.

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So before I get into the meat and potatoes of it, I have to say that I think no less of Wilshere because of this performance, nor should anyone think less of Xhaka because of any single bad performance, but it’s unlikely anyone will listen to that.

Wilshere was not an effective deep-lying midfielder. He could be seen, multiple times, not closing down Spurs’ midfielders, giving them all the room in the world to deliver workable balls into the middle of the pitch. That is a problem, and it doesn’t come down to tactics.

Wilshere did to a good job pushing play forward, but he, like so many others, seemed helpless to change the outcome of the game. He was just as helpless as, say Granit Xhaka, but hey, who’s keeping track? Wilshere created as many chances as Xhaka – 0. He completed five less defensive actions and 12% less passes. He only attempted one long ball against a defense that was begging to be hit over the top.

Xhaka completed all six of his.

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There were a lot of people at fault for this terrible match, but it’s irresponsible to pin it all on someone just because you don’t personally like them.