Arsenal’s longest serving player, and also one of our top earners, Theo Walcott, looks set to be a peripheral bench-warmer this season unless Olivier Giroud suffers a long term injury. The England international has made it clear that he wants to be the main centre-forward, so it looks like Arsene Wenger has decided to punish him by not playing him on the wing alongside Giroud either.
Aaron Ramsey, who has also announced many times that he doesn’t want to play on the wing, is now seemingly first-choice for Walcott’s place, and Theo admitted that Wenger had spoken to him about it. “It’s obviously frustrating,” Walcott said after spending the whole of the Palace game on the bench. “What’s good is the manager has pulled me to one side and spoken to me about my role – It’s no secret that I want to play up front.”
Readers often mention that it can be counter-productive to play Ramsey on the wing, as he is hardly a prolific goalscorer especially from that position, whereas Walcott has proven stats and ability to knock them in on a regular basis. In fact Wenger recently gave this as one of the reasons he does not intend to buy Benzema.
He said: “You do need somebody to score goals and I think Olivier Giroud will not be far from 20 this season. Theo Walcott will be up there too.
“We have to develop our game and depend less on one player.
“I truly believe we can win the league. We look like we can score plenty of goals.”
Far be it for me to question Wenger’s logic, but can anyone explain how both Giroud and Walcott can both score 20 goals a season if only one of them is on the pitch in any given game?