Friday 20 March 2015

Theo.







 The news today that Theo Walcott's contract talks will wait until the end of the season before resuming must have convinced 99% of Arsenal fans that this season would be his last, I have to say from a personal viewpoint that I don't necessarily agree with reports that "We hold all the aces", as with modern football very rarely does the club hold the ace these days.
 
Walcott signing a deal in the January of 2013 was crucial, we had lost Van Persie in the summer and this was the deal that needed to happen to buck the Nasri, Fabregas & Van Persie trend of summers past. Did we overpay to keep him? Probably. And that was where the seeds of this stand-off were sown.

Walcott on current form (I know he missed a year) doesn't merit a pay increase from 100k to the levels we see Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil take home and I seriously doubt Walcott would accept a pay freeze when there are clubs like Manchester City desperate for home-grown players or Liverpool, who are Walcott's boyhood team, willing to pay over the odds for an England International. In fact I hear at least 1 team is already in his agent's ear about leaving for bumper pay in the summer. His finishing is still as scattergun as it ever was and Arsenal seemed to overcome the lack of pace in attack that they were suffering around the time Theo signed on again.

Arsenal needed Theo then, but not so much now. A player who had the world at his feet in his teenage years leaves me thinking that he never has fulfilled his true potential, the ultimate sods law now is that he leaves for another team and fires on all cylinders earning whatever raise he would have wanted to stay, but that's a risk we should be willing to take.

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