Arsenal: You have to let Granit Xhaka get his confidence back

Granit Xhaka is not back at his best yet, so kindly let him get there before you go wishing him out of Arsenal again, will you?

Sometimes I submit my brain to cerebral torture and read something I just know is going to piss me off. I did that after Arsenal beat West Ham, reading the work of an unnamed source (wink wink, nudge nudge) as they berated Granit Xhaka and his performance against West Ham.

Let me get the pleasantries out of the way—Xhaka’s first half was just as bad as everyone else’s. Awful. But his second half turned around just like everyone else’s. Pretty good. He was playing some smart balls, some inquisitive balls, the kind he used to always play before his confidence was rocked by a few bad apples.

It’s like he was starting to feel like himself again. That’s a hard thing to do when you feel like the fans you’re playing for hate you. And wish you legitimate physical harm. Many thought Xhaka had played his last, but credit to him and his gumption, he’s getting back out there for the good of the team. (Yes, I said ‘good’.)

It’s a work in progress, and you have fans to blame for that, not Granit Xhaka. After Brighton, I said more of the same. You have to let Xhaka get his confidence back before you start throwing him to the wolves again.

He was accused of ‘hiding’ despite touching the ball 92 times—a figure that would have been much higher had be not been clocked in the side of the head. How does someone touch the ball that often if he’s hiding? He completed six of his seven longballs. Also best on the team. If you’re hiding, you don’t attempt longballs. You dink the ball to your neighbor and go to the other wide of the pitch.

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But then again, we have the crux of the issue. That Xhaka is the scapegoat of so many who don’t bother with the context of the situation, they just take it in isolation.

“That was a bad game, Granit Xhaka is bad.”

No.

“That was a bad game because Xhaka hasn’t played in months because a few idiots started threatening his newborn baby and booed him off the pitch like the petulant jacka$es they are.” That’s why he didn’t play well. That’s why he needs time to get his feet back underneath him.

The guy deserves credit for playing at all, but they don’t care about that. They don’t want to understand. And that’s why Xhaka will go down as one of the most misunderstood players in the history of this club.

I know, it’s the old anthem of emo high schoolers—”I’m so misunderstood.” But that’s not what it sounds like when applied to Granit Xhaka. It’s a willful misunderstanding. If they just take a step back from the game and look at this from a different context, they will see that Xhaka doesn’t deserve their scorn.

But hey, don’t mind me. I’ll be here talking about Xhaka until I’m blue in the face and it will probably be the same damn story.