I want to say that Theo Walcott is a divisive player, but that wouldn’t be true – it seems like the vast majority of fans love him and think he should almost always be in the team. Indeed, there can be few players in the Arsenal squad who Arsene Wenger is so routinely called upon by the fan-base to give a starting spot. I am not one of those fans, and am acutely aware of the fact that I am in the minority – although, as readers of my last two columns about Mikel Arteta and Per Mertesacker will know, I am reasonably used to that.
I am not one of those fans because Theo Walcott consistently frustrates me. In fact, that is about the only thing he is consistent at, other than being consistently inconsistent. For a player who is reputedly now earning around £140,000 a week, putting him up there with Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, he seems to have very little impact on the team – and that’s only when he’s actually in it.
The criticism once was that he lacked a ‘football brain’, that he was hesitant and indecisive. The general feeling now is that is no longer the case, or has at least improved markedly. But I am not convinced. I still feel that Walcott lacks a lot from his game that you would expect a footballer who has been at Arsenal since 2006 to possess. He was the first of the nippy British wingers to come off of the conveyor belt at Southampton that went on to produce Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gareth Bale and is arguably the worst of the three – Bale is an obviously superior player in almost every respect, and Chamberlain is both technically and mentally ahead of his team-mate.
Theo Walcott is largely riding two waves that are keeping his reputation so high. The first is that of the hype that surrounded him as a teenager, and the potential he once had, which still lingers on in the memory. The second is that of the increasing level of love that fans have for a player who can run fast, and the importance they place on such an attribute. In a world where pace in football is increasingly seen as the ‘almighty’, Theo Walcott is King.
But the ability to move faster than the others is not the be all and end all, and indeed is not even the most important thing for a footballer, despite the apparently increasing perception otherwise. Walcott lacks technical elements of his game that you would expect him to at least possess – if not be a master of. There is an argument that this is a result of his ability, at youth level especially but also beyond that, to simply run quicker than the opposition player, negating his need to develop other skills in order to beat the man. But it does also go beyond just that.
Walcott’s vision is nothing like that of the vast majority of his team-mates, meaning that he often appears hesitant to make a pass – but rather than actual hesitancy, I think often it’s actually simply because he hasn’t seen it. Much of the time many of the other players on the pitch appear to be a step or two ahead of him, meaning that he usually ends up going missing during games. This wouldn’t matter so much, if he was able to create opportunities for himself once he has picked up the ball, but he often fails to do even that – and if he does, the likelihood of him finishing it off is questionable.
He has, for as long as I can remember, constantly said that he wanted to be a centre-forward. But the lack of ability to both read how the attacking move is about to develop, and then his inability to finish most of the chances he gets, means that he clearly isn’t suited to such a role. He lacks that poacher’s instinct the top strikers must have – you need only watch his failure to convert what was essentially an open goal against Newcastle to see that – and, when moved into the centre and forced to play with his back to goal, he usually falls into anonymity.
There does still seem to be a view from some Arsenal fans that all he needs is a few more opportunities, a few more chances to prove himself. Walcott is 26, and the club’s longest-serving player. He’s played 208 times for Arsenal. The most goals he’s scored in a season is 21, in 2012/13 – the vast majority coming before he signed a new contract, with the goals drying up after that point. Other than that season, he’s only broken into double figures twice – in the two campaigns before that one. As a comparison, Olivier Giroud has scored in double figures in every season since 2006/07, scoring 17, 22 and then 19 in his three seasons at Arsenal so far.
Walcott does not just need a few more chances. He is the player he is, and he is a useful one to have at the club – there is a lack of proper wingers at Arsenal. But he is no centre-forward, he is not one of the top players at the club, and should not be starting anywhere near as much as most fans appear to want him to. He once had the potential to be one of the best in the world, but like with Jack Wilshere, that potential is no more – and like with Jack Wilshere, we can possibly point to regular injuries as a possible reason.
But I feel that ultimately Walcott was, and probably still is, just another over-hyped English player who in a nation like Spain or Germany would only have been seen as an above-average winger, rather than a global star of the future. He’s another of the players that the media and fans decided to build up and pin all their hopes on, simply because he was English and half-decent. He wasn’t the first and isn’t the last – several others have already been and gone since Walcott’s initial ‘moment’ – but I do hope that, at some point, we all manage to end the habit we have fallen into. Maybe finally then, a player like Walcott may actually develop into what we hoped he could be.
