The New Theo?
Hats off to Theo – he has begun the campaign in a fashion becoming an Arsenal player among the higher earners at the club. That is not the fashion in which he finished the last campaign…
Various things have happened in recent months:
This happened:
This did not happen:
Not going to France
This may have happened:
As may this:
TOO HIGH – No Takers
Resulting in this
Serious Talks
This and the situation should have resulted in several of these:
Then of course this at the end of last season helped him:
Whoops he did it again
This certainly helped too:
As did this:
Alex injured v LFC
Add to that the continued indifferent form of this chap:
And the sale of this chap:
All resulting in Theo Walcott getting another chance to shine and so far he is taking it. I read somewhere he has put in more tackles and interceptions in 3 games than he did all last season. Can he keep it up?
So far so good:
A short comp of Walcott’s August: pic.twitter.com/fJ7ILsInMK
— Benjamin (@gothbergkamp) September 1, 2016
Top quality video from @gothbergkamp on Theo in first 270 mins of 16/17 which has earned him an England recall from the new manager.
Theo it’s over to you……
I may be more serious next time. Have a Great weekend now. Dave
Passionate fifty-something Arsenal supporter who has been making the journey to N5 regularly since the early 1980s – although his first game was in 1976. Always passionate when talking about The Arsenal, Dave decided to send a guest blog to Gunnersphere in the summer of 2011 and has not stopped writing about the Gunners since.
He set up his own site – 1 Nil Down 2 One Up – in February 2012, which he moved on in 2016 to concentrate on freelance writing and building Gunners Town, which he launched with Paul in 2014.
The objective of GT was to be new and fresh and to give a platform for likeminded passionate Arsenal fans wishing to write about their team. Dave still of course, writes for the site himself and advises the ever-changing writing crew.
I enjoyed this cameo and I agree with your comments on Theo. I was an enthusiastic fan of Theo when he was on the up, but I have to confess that his haggling over a wage demand when the club was in crisis, turned me against him. What made it worse was that we would have expected his performance to improve commensurate with his increase in wages. Unfortunately, not only did it not happen but his commitment to the team dropped. He seemed to think that as a highly paid striker/winger he was excused the tedious job of tracking back to defend against marauding full backs. By the end of the season, I think he had got the message from the fans who had clearly deserted him.
He probably thought that his reputation would earn him a transfer to a select club, if he was forced into more commitment than he was prepared to give. If he did have such a notion it was soon dispelled when there were no enquiries from any clubs. His hard wrung wages are now a burden for him to carry to another club, so he has discovered that he now has competition from an improved Ox, Iwobi, Sanchez, Campbell ( before his loan ) and Ramsey. Anyway; the situation is what it is and he has upped his game. He is the highest early season scorer and he is actually making tackles unlike last season when he actually pulled out of 50/50 tackles.
It will take a bit more of this kind of performance to regain the respect I and many other fans used to have for him, but I hope the penny has dropped. It has been said that Wenger gets there in the end, well maybe Theo has too.