We're going through a little dip at the moment and we need to beat Newcastle on Saturday, but before I talk about that, I want to make a few points about the Granit Xhaka situation at Arsenal.

Granit has taken a lot of flak for his reaction after being substituted last weekend but — as a fellow captain of a London Premier League club — I did have some sympathy for him.

I know what it’s like when things are not going as well as you would like because, if you’re a manager or a captain, fans tend to aim more criticism at you.

It’s a tough one and a fine line because you’re trying your best, but if you’re booed by your fans it is inevitable that your confidence will take a hit. I’ve had it myself, but the bottom line is that everything changes with results.

Obviously, Granit has made mistakes and sometimes his discipline may not be the best, but the way I’ve always seen it is that the fans pay their hard-earned money, they go to the games and they have a right to express their opinion.

There have been players at West Ham who haven’t been regulars and who many supporters haven’t really taken to. At some point, though, we will need those players, so you can’t give them the cold shoulder. An example last ­season was Lucas Perez. He came in for plenty of criticism, but came in for a few games, scored important goals and won us the points.

Granit is one of those players who wears his heart on his sleeve and it’s tough for him at the moment.

In all honesty, the best solution might be to tell his agent, “Look, they don’t like me here, so maybe it’s best if I go and play somewhere else”. There would be a lot of takers for him because he is a quality player and it does seem, from the outside, that his fellow players love him, both as a professional and a ­person. If I was him I would say, “I’ve had a great time here, but it’s not worked out recently and it’s time for a new challenge”.

I remember Slaven Bilic telling me, “Once the box is open, it never closes”. The chances are that, if he makes one bad pass in the next match in which he plays, they’ll be on him again.

Regarding our home match against Newcastle tomorrow, we just need to take our opportunities when they come.

We didn’t do that in the 1-1 draw against Sheffield United. We had three really good opportunities to finish them off and if we had gone 2-0 up, the match was effectively done. But we couldn’t nail it. They then get a chance and we get punished. It just seems at the moment that we’re not getting anything going our way.

We just haven’t been able to finish teams off and we’ve slipped down to 10th in the table. We’re only three points away from Arsenal in fifth, though, so there’s no need to be too down on ­ourselves.

Yes, we’ve only picked up a couple of points from our last four games, but we haven’t really lost any ground and if we can get a result against Newcastle, we will be right back up there.

Results can affect confidence one hundred per cent, but we know we’re not going to play well in every game — no-one does — but we need to pick up a result when we’re not right at the top of our game and we’re fully capable of that.

I'll be cheering on England rugby stars

I’ll definitely be watching the Rugby World Cup Final before we leave for the London Stadium on Saturday morning.

What I loved about the semi-final was that, after England had beaten the All Blacks, there was no celebration. They just walked around the pitch, clapped the fans and walked in.

I thought that was brilliant. In football, if you reach a final, you celebrate but there was none of that. It was a case of: We’ve still got a job to do — one more game.

I also learned recently that, in every level of the game, the players from both teams eat together after the game. That is fantastic.

VAR you serious?

I watched the penalty, given by VAR, for Brighton against Everton last weekend and could not believe the decision.

I was in favour of VAR but it needs some serious revising. It was never, ever a penalty and if we’re going down that route, then we are in definite trouble.

It frightens me, the decisions that are being made — it’s taken so much emotion out of the game. It has to be sorted out.