Arsenal: Oh look, it’s time to defend Granit Xhaka again

Arsenal’s loss against West Ham was as frustrating as they come, and if you buy the narrative, it was all Granit Xhaka fault. Because isn’t it always?

It’s that time again. That time where, despite not having made a mistake for quite some time, Granit Xhaka‘s mistake is being pinpointed as the No. 1 component of the latest rendition of the Arsenal blame game.

There’s no hiding the mistake that he made. He was caught in between two options regarding how to clear the ball and picked the wrong one, heading it straight to Samir Nasri, who found Declan Rice, who was remarkably wide open, and Rice put the ball home.

I won’t defend that mistake. Clearly Unai Emery didn’t want to defend it either because, for the first time in a while, he yanked Xhaka at the hour mark, relying on the rarely-useful duo of Torreira and Guendouzi to hold down the base of the midfield.

I get why there would be criticism of Xhaka. Some people feel that mistakes like these vindicate their undying vendetta to pin as much as they possibly can on the guy. After all, it’s a lot easier to keep blaming someone than to admit that you were wrong and accept that he’s actually quite a useful player.

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But guess what? That ship already sailed. Because, in the midst of Xhaka’s fantastic season thus far (yes, I said fantastic), he had one big match that he was missing from – against Manchester United due to yellow card accumulation.

And that was the match where people started to notice the difference between having Xhaka and not having Xhaka. Without him in the squad, it was a free-for-all. Guendouzi and Torreira, while solid in their own rights, are a bit excitable, whereas the slow, tempo-building of Xhaka often gets overlooked.

That was last month. Last month, people started to acknowledge how important Xhaka was in the grand scheme and here we are, mere matches later, and he is being ousted as the culprit to the failure and called “mediocre at best.”

I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s been awhile since I’ve had to write a “shut up about Xhaka” article, but here I am again, like my own perpetual groundhog day, wondering if there will ever be a day when I don’t have to remind people that they don’t really want Xhaka out of the club.

Hey, maybe next year.