Granit Xhaka shouldn’t take all the blame for Arsenal’s loss to Watford last weekend, according to Thierry Henry.

Xhaka came in for a lot of criticism after reacting slowly to the danger as Tom Cleverley scored the winner against Arsenal last weekend. However, Henry insists that there were other players to blame for the incident.

Thierry explained in The S*n (via Daily Star): “There were five or six individual defensive errors committed before Xhaka was slow to react on the edge of the box, allowing Tom Cleverley to nip in ahead of him and slam home for Watford.

“We can go through them. This isn’t to single people out or to apportion blame. But simply to point out that Arsenal’s defensive issues are a collective problem – and that hammering Xhaka is not the solution.”

Henry then went on to pick out some of those individual errors that were ignored, to make the point that there was plenty more wrong than just the Swiss midfielder’s slow reaction.

To me, it seems fans are always looking for a particular player or two to pick out as the only reason why the whole team lost. Last week, Özil missed a chance and Xhaka got caught ball watching, so they were blamed for the defeat.

It doesn’t seem to matter much that plenty of other players missed chances, or that so few players were actually creating any until Özil entered the fray, or that the Watford winner could have been prevented earlier on by any number of Arsenal’s players.

Henry is right to call for people to analyse the whole game, not just one or two incidents. The Arsenal team that lined up against the Hornets last weekend should’ve been good enough to win, even if the Gunners did handicap themselves with a clear cut chance missed and a defensive error.