After the shambles, the finger-pointing.
Nobody at Arsenal comes out of Sunday’s 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace with any credit. Not the fans, nor Granit Xhaka and most certainly boss Unai Emery.
Supporters at most clubs mistakenly believe their financial and emotional investment entitles them to cross the line under the guise of supporting their team. That’s not an Arsenal problem, it’s a football problem.
It means anything goes when things are going badly and that all the bile is miraculously forgotten in a kind of collective amnesia when things eventually start going well again.
Xhaka, however, is an example of how players can reach their breaking point when enough is enough.
(Image: Action Images via Reuters)
Even now, most Arsenal fans are still seeing the disrespect to the armband, the badge, the shirt and the club. Strip away the football, however, and Xhaka is a man crumbling under pressure.
His treatment brings back memories of the time the former Arsenal right-back Emmanuel Eboue was reduced to tears as he was booed off by his own fans against Wigan in 2008.
Eboue later revealed the incident made him not want to come into training.
“When you are a footballer and your own fans boo you, it’s very bad,” he said. “Your confidence goes. After that happened I said to Arsene Wenger, ‘I don’t want to come in any more for training.’”
(Image: Shaun Botterill/Getty)
Speaking to Eboue for a wide-ranging interview on behalf of the Mirror a couple of years ago, I came to understand just how deeply his fragile confidence could be affected by an incident just like that.
Eboue is a man whose impoverished circumstances are now a world away from the lifestyle he’d led as a Premier League footballer.
We discussed issues that gave an insight into why, although we in football claim to understand mental health, we still forget all about it when our teams are searching for a winner or an equalizer with the clock counting down.
Or when a lack of confidence is interpreted as not giving 100percent or not being good enough. He’d been crushed.
(Image: Reuters)
It is a fair bet that whatever Xhaka said to the fans was nothing compared to what he’d received from the terraces.
Seven years ago I sat in the press box at the Emirates during the north London derby as then-Arsenal winger Theo Walcott received fearful stick during a first half in which Spurs had gone 2-0 up in the first 35 minutes.
After the restart Walcott netted the final two goals in a 5-2 win and was cheered off the pitch. He’d been resilient enough to deal with the stick. Some players are not.
The fact that Xhaka had even found himself in the fans’ crosshairs is down to Emery.
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His indecisiveness over the captaincy issue in the first place raised eyebrows, having the players pick in some sort of X-Factor vote.
It smacked of a man unable to select a natural leader and was always likely to end in tears. It is to the credit of the Arsenal players that three of them visited Xhaka at home on Sunday night to lend their support.
Unity is what will get the Gunners through this tough period. Removing the captaincy from Xhaka need not be a punishment. It might just free him up to to become an asset for the club, unburdened by the armband.
(Image: WILL OLIVER/EPA-EFE/REX)
In the meantime the spotlight should remain on Emery. He arrived as the man with the plan, only for the last year or so to reveal he doesn’t have one.
Good players are only half the battle. He needed to solve their defensive problems. He hasn’t. He needed to address their lack of steel in midfield. He didn’t.
The players are taking stick for his inadequacies. He needs to sort it or risk seeing the hour-glass turned upside down on his tenure.
