Jamie Carragher did not hold back in his assessment of Granit Xhaka, branding the midfielder as ‘shocking’ for his role in West Ham’s opener against Arsenal.
The Swiss midfielder did little to get in the way of centre-back Angelo Ogbonna, who charged in to head Manuel Pellegrini’s side ahead.
It capped the end of a miserable half for Arsenal, who failed to muster a shot on target, and gave interim coach Freddie Ljungberg another tough team talk to dish out at half-time.
Ljungberg had left some of the biggest culprits for defensive errors out of the side, with David Luiz dropping out of the starting XI and Shkodran Mustafi not even making the bench, but Xhaka came into Carragher’s line of fire once more for his lack of effort to stop his team falling behind.
‘When we cover Arsenal there are always two or three fall guys we seem to attack,’ Carragher told Sky Sports.
‘People may actually think it’s bullying in some ways when we do our analysis. We always mention David Luiz…
‘Xhaka here is shocking. The ball comes across there and he’s going for the ball and he just ducks out of it.
‘He may not have got there but do more. Put him off, hit his shoulder, put him off the header… do something!’
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