Theo Walcott has taken the brave move to talk to Arsenal’s official website following last night’s painful defeat to Crystal Palace, and admits his side let the fans down.
The forward is our longest-serving player at present, and is also one of the most targeted players in the squad, but he hasn’t allowed himself to become disillusioned with the support, and he has come out to tell the fans of his disappointment.
“The biggest thing was letting the fans down tonight,” he told Arsenal.com. “We all did and that’s not Arsenal at all.
“We thought we’d bounced back well against Manchester City and West Ham at home, but tonight that wasn’t us at all.
“We’re very disappointed in that dressing room, like the fans are as well because we’ve let them down tonight. We need to respond and that’s only going to come from hard work at training.
“We don’t go out there to lose games, we try to work the best we can but tonight it just didn’t happen. All we can do is apologise for that performance tonight.
“I think they just wanted it more,” he added. “You could tell they wanted it more and you could sense that from kick-off. It was an uphill battle towards the end.
“This isn’t Arsenal in this moment in time. We thought we’d got out of this little rough patch before. Hopefully we haven’t been dragged straight back into it, but judging on that performance tonight, it looks like we have.
“We go out on the pitch and we try to do a job, so we’ve let the manager down, like we have with the fans. That’s all I can say.“
I think we were all of the belief that we were going to kick on from a couple of positive results, believing that our bad run was behind us, but we have given all our rivals the biggest boost in the race for the top four.
Is Walcott trying to take some of the pressure of the manager? Do more players need to speak up about failing the fans and the club?
Pat J