Arsenal: Don’t you even think about jumping ship on Granit Xhaka

Arsenal sucked against Wolverhampton, and Granit Xhak is included in that suckage, but don’t even think about bailing on him now.

I should have known this was coming. All season long, Arsenal fans have been getting in line with Granit Xhaka, appreciating him for what he is and the difference that he makes, and finally learning to appreciate what an invaluable commodity he is in this midfield. All of the scapegoating and “he’s not good enough” was coming to a close.

The moment that Granit Xhaka gave up that third goal against Wolverhampton, it all undid itself. Just like old times, like someone hit the reset button, fans were spewing that he needs to be sold, that he isn’t good enough, that he was never good enough. Not all of them, granted, some are smart enough to understand him. But a lot of them.

It’s so predictable, and it’s so woefully misplaced. It’s just a bunch of angry fans (who have every right to be angry, granted) needing an outlet, and so they resort to the outlet they know best, because everyone else is doing the same.

Xhaka has been out for a few weeks now, he’s been battling injuries off and on for the past couple months and, spoiler alert, he’s human. So yeah, when he comes back into a match and has a single bad game in a pool of positive performances, it’s going to be okay!

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This was an incredibly rare mistake in what was otherwise a decent enough match. One mistake that gave away the third goal, but when is the last time we’ve seen him do that? He isn’t like Shkodran Mustafi, who is liable to do it every single match. He hasn’t done this all year. It’s a part of his past, but the fact that it just happened to resurface once apparently means that he hasn’t improved at all.

You may not have noticed, but he also led the team in created chances, notched the only assist, tied for the team lead in winning the ball back, lead the team in aerials won. You want to complain about him being a bit laggy from rust? Come on. Laurent Koscielny had that too, didn’t he?

I don’t know why I thought things had changed. Fans needed a culprit and it’s easy to blame Xhaka.

I can’t wait until he’s gone another six months without a mistake to see these same people talking about how wonderful he is. Such is the time table of being a fan.