With Jose Mourinho bringing his title chasing team to the Emirates for Arsenal´s next game, it does not take a genius to work out what tactics the negative one is going to employ. Arsene Wenger will know that there will be a big blue Chelsea bus parked in front of the Gunners at the weekend, so I don´t expect Theo Walcott to start as there will be no space for him to use that blistering pace.
But after that, I think that we will be seeing a lot more of the England international forward between now and the end of the season for a number of reasons.
For one thing, the boss only has seven games left before the end of the season and the need to decide once and for all whether to keep Theo and give him a new contract or sell him on and sign someone else. And Wenger only has six games to select his starting line up for the FA cup final.
While all of the Arsenal players will be desperate to play in that Wembley final, Walcott has more reason than most because he missed last year´s with the cruciate ligament injury that ended his season. Surely now is the time to unleash his pace and get his match sharpness to a peak.
Not only will he playing for the final, he will be playing for his future. And there is an outside chance, however unlikely I think it is, that Alexis Sanchez could be forced to join up with the Chile national team the day before the cup final. If that happened we would want a Walcott firing on all cylinders. So is it Theo´s time to shine_