Talk about a day of contrasts for Theo Walcott: just after he’d been cleared by the FA for having coins thrown at him by mindless idiots came the news that he’s going to miss the rest of the season because of the knee injury he picked up against Sp*rs on Saturday evening.
He’s ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, requires surgery and will be out of action for 6 months. That rules him out of the remainder of the domestic season and puts paid to his hopes of going to the World Cup this summer. It robs us of pace and goals from the man who was our leading scorer last season, not to mention an experienced player who had matured greatly inside the last 18 months.
Even if you still have some reservations about him it’s impossible to ignore the fact he’s a player with a knack for getting goals. He might play poorly, and then bang, he’s provided you with something tangible in a game. I don’t quite understand the thinking of the people who say ‘Well, we’re top of the league and we’ve done it without Walcott, so it won’t make a difference’.
Yes, we’ve coped without him at times, but he’s still made 18 appearances, and ultimately you want your most effective players fit and healthy because this is an era in which your squad needs to contribute, not just individuals. It’s a real shame for him on a personal level, it certainly weakens us as a squad, so fingers crossed that he makes a full and speedy recovery.
For some interesting reading on ACL injuries, this piece on Grantland is well worth a few minutes of your time. There isn’t just the physical side of the injury, players have to get over a bit mental hurdle too.
However, without trying to gloss over it in any way, if there is a good time for something like this to happen, then it’s now. We’ve seen the emergence of Serge Gnabry as an option for the right hand side, and sometimes it’s unfortunate things like this which provide an opening for a young player to make his mark. There’s also Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, back in full training after suffering a cruciate injury himself on the opening day of the season, who will be chomping at the bit and keen to make his mark – although as the Grantland article suggests, it’d be a lot to expect from him less than 6 months after that kind of injury.
The other thing, of course, is that this is the month in which it’s possible to use our financial resources to soften the blow. This happening on February 1st would have made it more difficult to cope, and with the need for some strengthening apparent even before this news, it now makes the transfer window even more important.
It doesn’t make finding the right player any easier. There are still all the issues that January brings, and perhaps our bargaining hand is weakened as other clubs know our need is more pressing, but it’s not as if those are insurmountable obstacles.
I think it now makes buying somebody an absolute necessity though. Walcott’s stop-start season meant he was likely to be one of those players with the freshest legs in the second half of the campaign, and the 21 goals and 14 assists he got in 2012-13 have to be made up for. Some of that can come from the squad, no doubt about it. Podolski, Santi Cazorla who, hopefully, is firing again, and Ox and Gnabry, but it’d be a lot to ask for two young players to pick up the slack.
The question for the manager is thus: does he look for that short-term solution he spoke about last week, or try and do something more permanent. If we have a definite target for the summer, do we try and do everything we can bring him in now? It might cost a bit more – and I’m mindful of the fact that you have to counter the ‘Just spend what it takes!’ argument with the fact we’re talking MILLIONS of pounds – but isn’t it better to pay a bit more for the right option rather than pay that difference on a loan deal or a short-term signing anyway?
It’s not entirely in our hands either. Clubs might simply refuse to sell, players may not want to move mid-season, but then these are the challenges you hope that our transfer market professionals can deal with successfully. Arsenal looks an attractive proposition these days. You’re not joining a team that is going to scrap its way up the table for 4th, this is an outfit that is fighting for the title and new arrivals could find themselves an important part of that.
You’re not coming in to play alongside Song, Denilson, Squillaci and Chamakh. You get to play with Mesut Ozil, Santi Cazorla, Bacary Sagna and Aaron Ramsey. So maybe those things might make a player think more carefully about jumping ship halfway through a season, so it’ll be interesting to see what the manager’s approach to all this is now.
Elsewhere there’s talk of Ryo Miyaichi going out on loan and even in light of yesterday’s news this is probably for the best. Theo being injured doesn’t make Ryo ready for action at this level just yet, and he really does need to go somewhere and play on a regular basis to improve and develop. Whether that’s a team lower down the Premier League or one fighting to come up from the Championship remains to be seen, but either way he needs to get games under his belt.
And one of the young men who will surely get more time in the team because of Walcott’s cruciate, Serge Gnabry, seems to have a very level headed approach to things. His attitude is basically, ‘Ok, I did well, but I’m not getting carried away because I know I can do better’, is highly refreshing. As I mentioned yesterday, being brought through this team under the wings of players like Rosicky, Ozil, Podolski and Mertesacker will surely stand him in good stead.
And finally for today, as we’re on the subject of Mertesacker, his little message to Theo is fantastic. He’s like a enormously tall puppy, impossible not to love.
“Can we keep him?”
Till tomorrow.
