So yet again we have seen an Arsenal player over-react to an opponent, and yet again we now have to do without Granit Xhaka for the next three games after VAR persuaded the ref to change his decision from a yellow to a straight red.
Mohammed Elneny nearly suffered the same fate as well but luckily got away with just a yellow, although the replay saw the Egyptian clearly push both his hands into James Tarkowski’s face. This is what Arteta said when asked by Arsenal.com whether Granit Xhaka’s behaviour was unacceptable. “Absolutely.” he said.
“Yes, but honestly, I think it was unacceptable to do that action, and the players are in a moment that they are so willing to do more and fight more and show how committed they are, to be alive in the game, that on this occasion Granit has overstepped the line.
“It’s another action with Mo that I haven’t seen, but it looks similar. We cannot make those mistakes because they’re the wrong approach to what we’re trying to do.”
So, since Arteta took over, Arsenal have had 7 red cards dished out, and the next highest team opnly has three. If the boss thinks that means the players “are committed”, then its obviously a ploy that is not working when you look at our position on the table.
Arteta’s retaliation was not just “unacceptable” it was totally unneccessary and simply shows that Xhaka is not in control of his actions, or simply doesn’t care what the consequences are. We have seen this far too many times from the Swiss international and it is about time he grew up and accepted some responsibilty. Don’t you think?
Committed? What the hell is he talking about?
After slaughtering Pepe, this shows blatant favoritism towards certain players.
Said it yesterday, and I reiterate it now, SACK ARTETA.
Granit Xhaka is not good enough for Arsenal…..FACT. Remember his penalty give away against Brighton under Unai Emery….cost us 4th place. Now he’s ****** us again.
Arteta himself holds grudges. He has character problems. Example Guendouzi, Ozil and Saliba. You want him as our manager? He is just not good enough for the job. Too inexperienced and watching us play out from the back agains Burnley was heartbreaking in it’s poverty of result and naivety. Arteta MUST go before we get into a bigger mess.
I cant believe Arteta is still in a job as we speak should have been sacked immediately after last nights embarrassment surely must be gone by end of today if not be a very easy 3 points for Southampton on Wed the club is a absolute shambles from top to bottom will never compete for major honours again well def not in my life time anyway!!
Get a hold on yourself already, when are we going to move forward if we keep firing managers every December
What are you talking about if we continue with Arteta in charge we will be a championship team next season is that what you want Adajim!!
Yes pal. We fire Mikel now and we are going to fire the next one next Christmas. I think Dan wrote an article about the cycle a few days back.
We are clearly in a state of chaos the players clearly don’t understand his game plan or tactics if there is any at all and they are frustrated and fed up, that is obvious. I understand why Arteta would want to defend Xhaka, he is ultimately the one who convinced Xhaka to stay and the more frustrated Xhaka gets the worse his behavior on the field becomes we saw it under Emery and we seeing it now. Why can’t we all just admit that we made a mistake with the appointment of Arteta period, haven’t he caused enough damage. Remember the league table never lies no matter how we want to cut it. His time is up period.
Why is Xhaka so quick to respond with violence. Every time he’s on the field there is a high chance of a red card. Really let us down yesterday.
As for Arteta; it’s really an unfortunate situation we find ourselves in because most arsenal fans me included desperately wanted him to succeed.
The thing is unlike under Emery, the team under Arteta ain’t great but they don’t play terrible either. The problem so far has been scoring. Playing well but failing to score.
So there must be something he’s doing right, he’s yet to get the final piece of the jigsaw.
Only a biased fan would say we were terrible yesterday and that we were poor.
As usual we played well, with the usual culprits failing to utilise their chances until Xhaka’s gunpowder exploded and Auba’s Own goal.
I can’t call for him to be sacked yet.
Let him have his January window and we’ll see where we end up at the end of the season.
A couple of us still believes he’s the right man.
I completely agree Eddie. I don’t want him sacked just yet, I’m willing to finish in bottom half of the table even as long as we don’t end up in the championship and there is serious improvement to show for our patience and faith in the manager. The problem is though what if there is no improvement and we keep going down the table? I hope that is not the case.
Ditto here as well. I am wondering about his team selections though. I also wonder if the big money given to Auba was the right thing to do.
OMG.🙇🙇
Since the popular opinion is that Granit is more than useless it is fair to suggest that it is a good thing he is going to miss three games and this maybe a chance for another player to take his place.
Xhaka let himself down and worse than that, scuppered the chances of his team mates at a time when confidence was low and a win was essential. Arsenal were on top so his actions were totally unacceptable. If Pepe can apologise for his stupidity then we should expect no less from Xhaka. It was a borderline assault.
One sent off and another lucky not to be!
I can only hope Arteta made his feelings known privately. I get it that a lot was on the line for that game but Arteta really should not have made any excuses at all for either of them
Sue P What excuses did MA make? I heard him condemn Xhaka in no uncertain terms and rightly so. Your comment amazes me, esp coming from you!
I want to believe MA was been skeptical. The red card look soo intentional, despite lacazet intervention, he ensure to complete the ‘mission’of getting himself sent off, that’s pure stupidity.
MA doesn’t need to garnish it in another way possible because he doesn’t want to create unnneccesary tension, having all these issues are enough, and I think he learned from Pepe comment, however that’s not commitment. A committed player wouldnt have gotten himself sent off knowing that your team was playing well,.
This comment is another insult on our intelligence and has done more harm to Pepe ego, creating another issue in the team
He publicly said Xhaka’s behavior was unacceptable! I don’t get why people are saying he backed Xhaka after not backing Pepe.
He’s already said it’s not acceptable! What else do you guys expect?
Xhaka ruined the game clearly.
FFS we were on the bright foot, being a threat, almost looking to get a goal and that bozo that should be an experienced senior player went to react that way and got sent off.
Would you still blame Arteta for that?
I’ve never been one afraid to speak his mind.
After supporting Emery at first, six months into his reign I saw terror and turned my back.
I’m getting to that point with Arteta now, even tho I’m not there yet.
He needs to start being that tough but he keeps claiming to be and he needs to drop half of those senior players.
They’re all shît, he needs to drop them.
It includes Auba. He needs a break!!
The confidence is at an all time low.
Give Nelson, Smith and co the chance.
Hell start Balogun in the next game.
Make moves so these spoilt senior players would know you mean business.
I swear a combo of William + Bellerin is disaster. Not until Saka moved to the RW we started getting threats from there.
And our next five games don’t seem like games that’ll favour him right now
Eddie, what’s was Bellerin and William offense in yesterday match, ?
could you tell us how you think Saka, KT wing was better?
I agree with rest of your comment and I’ll love to have a left-leg winger on the rw
What was their offense? They were next to useless that’s their offence. Surely Willian won’t play next game and we know Bellerin won’t because is on a ban.
Bro like Declan said, they were both completely useless. They’ve been like that in most games.
We don’t get any threat at all from the RW
This kind of form got Thierry sacked.
I think the board are actually embarrassed to sack him.
Well that’s a reaction of a rookie manager who nobody respects anymore.
How many red cards would we see this season?
Do you think any player who respects his manager would do that? Would Mourinho accept such behavior from his players?
This tells you a lot about what’s going on at Arsenal. Players fighting in training , making stupid gestures at games. What’s next?
It’s not AFC it’s UFC
Spot on Eddie.The sooner Xhaka leaves our Club the better for all concerned.To be fair to Bellerin and Willian, they both worked their socks off and I could not fault them for effort.On a tactical front our Centre Backs need to push further up the park as a starting point.While neither is blessed with real pace, physically they coped well with the Burnley strikers although the mix up between Gabriel and Bellerin could have proved costly, when Wood missed their only chance in the match.Having looked at the incident on more than one occasion, Gabriel was more culpable than Bellerin in my opinion.Both Elneney and Xhaka played far too deep to support our front three and Saka was the main threat for us in terms of creativity.He needs to work on his finishing , but he plays on the half turn and in that way commits defenders.He is going to be a very good player.
Grandad I very rarely take issue with you but if you think Willian worked hard yesterday, we must have neen watching two different players! I THOUGHT HE FAILED TO GIVE AND GO MANY TIMES AND JUST STOOD STILL AFTER PASSING THE BALL.
Never running into dangerous attacking positions and even Souness said exactly that! His dismal LACK of effort is what is holding him back from being the player he was when at Chelsea. Surprised at your view , frankly!
The rest of your post, as usual, was sound.
Committed? Really?? Smh….get him out, I don’t ever want to see him in an Arsenal shirt again…
Every game you expect to see a reaction – nada!! Our finishing is as bad as our creativity… and it’s only going to get worse… our woes are relentless, whatever can go wrong does go wrong… I know I was told to buckle up for it’ll be a bumpy ride, but bloody hell!! I didn’t expect it to be this bad!! Shell-shocked!!
I don’t even have the desire to watch us play anymore as long as Xhaka is in the squad.
Reportedly he’s not too happy that he’s not a guaranteed starter after Partey’s arrival, so fingers crossed he’ll be gone within 6 months time.
What a response from Arteta. Simply baffling!
If the board and owner care,they should sack Arteta to save the season and the club.
We will lose our next 5 EPL fixtures.
With these performance.It is not magic.
The excuses are getting ridiculous by the day, that’s what happens when you keep lowering your expectations, we lost but it was Pool.. But it was Leicester.. But it was Wolves.. But it was The Spuds.. Now we were on top until the red card(not for the time by the way) not only that but we are now making excuses for the red cards, I read a comment yesterday on JA “but I’m confident we will avoid relegation”the same person who wrote after few games we are only 6 pts from the top, few weeks later we are only 5 pts from top 6 and now this what’s next?
This pressure is too much for MA. His inexperience in the game is becoming obvious. The indiscipline from his team is unacceptable. I’m afraid it’s going to cost just him his job.
I hope from this suspension he will be sold in January transfer and never to be seen in arsenal shirt again
Xhaka’s red card is blessing in disguise. Atleast we’ll play 3 games without Xhaka. On the other hand, Arteta should be fired. The guy failed dismally. He’s pulling Arsenal brand down the drain with him
Ad PAT, I Cannot agree that xahaka should grow up as he has already grown up, but into an ill disciplined headstrong lout with no personal discipline at all and far too high an opinion of his own ability-or to be accurate , LACK of ability.
He should never have been brought here by Wenger at all, but the fact that both managers since then still picked him is weird and unfathomable.
ALMOST ALL GOONERS WANT HIM GONE, TO JUDGE FROM MANY COMMENTS ACROSS MANY YEARS.
So can anyone explain to this bewildered fan writing this, WHY on earth this ponderous clot is still here? Does he know where the bodies are buried, as there can be no other explanation!
Observe how close the ref is to that incident in the picture at head of this article and ask yourself why he only booked XHAKA, instead of just dismissing him, UNTIL he was asked to go to watch the screen.
The sending off was correct no doubt but look how much the ref, WHO CLEARLY SAW THE INCIDENT FROM CLOSE HAND, was undermined once again, by VAR.
I’D BIN IT TOMORROW, EVEN THOUGH IT GETS SOME ,BUT NOT ALL, DECISIONS RIGHT. IT CAUSES FAR MORE HARM THAN GOOD OVERALL AND KILLS ENJOYMENT FOR FANS AND PLAYERS ALIKE.
VAR is here to stay and its good for catching off the ball incidents and violent behaviour like Xhaka’s. I would never condone such behaviour VAR or no VAR jon