Arsenal legend Parlour hits back at Neville’s criticism of Xhaka and insists ace is ‘a decent player’

RAY PARLOUR has leapt to the defence of Granit Xhaka after the Arsenal midfielder was hammered for giving away a penalty in the North London derby.

An untimely lunge on Son Heung-min was lambasted as "total madness" by Gary Neville.

And while Parlour admitted that Sunday was not Xhaka's finest performance, he insists the Swiss captain has his qualities.

Parlour told TalkSPORT's Wednesday morning breakfast show: “Xhaka is good on the ball, he’s decent!

“He can spray passes 25 or 30 yards no problem, he’s very good at doing that.

“Sometimes he fits in and keeps it simple, but at the weekend he didn’t have a good game.

“You know when you’ve not had a good game as a player and I’m sure he knew that at the end but he’s got to get back now, he’s skipper, he can’t let it worry him.

“Xhaka has just got to calm down sometimes, he’s got to be a bit cleverer, you’ve got to be clever as a player.

“When you’re captain you can’t make mistakes like he did and give the other team opportunities to score goals.

“For the penalty, it was a really poor decision from him to go in like that.

"You can’t just dive in like that. He’s got to learn from that, he’s got to be a bit more disciplined.”

For Xhaka, there was no defending the penalty but there was plenty to like about Arsenal's performance in the 2-2 draw with Tottenham.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang nudged home a late equaliser as the Gunners came from two goals down - and could have won the match according to Xhaka.

He told reporters: "Of course critics are always here.

"The North London derby, I think we had a good game.

"I made a mistake with the penalty but if you saw the game, we could have won. We had a lot of chances but this is football.

"Nobody speaks about the chances, nobody speaks about how many we missed. They always speak about the mistakes. This is part of football."

Xhaka will hope for a better personal display when on Switzerland duty this week, facing Republic of Ireland and Gibraltar in Euro 2020 qualifiers.

In three appearances for Arsenal this season, the 26-year-old already has two yellow cards and ten fouls to his name.

Describing his hack on Son, Neville had called it: "Absolute madness from Xhaka, from an experienced player who never becomes experienced.

"He does it week in week out and never learns."