Theo Walcott

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

Only once managed 10+ goals per season. Some interesting stuff...

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/oct/01/theo-walcott-arsenal-prodigy-centre-forward

 

[Abridged]

 

Walcott is 26. He cannot be a great hope forever, living in a limbo of possibility, forever on the verge of breaking through without ever quite doing it. This is a player who, in 2008, eviscerated Croatia for England, scoring a hat-trick as they lost a competitive game in the Maksimir for the first time, yet only once has he managed 10 league goals in a season.

Arsenal’s Champions League experience means nothing as same old naivety continues

Amy Lawrence

Read more

It hasn’t helped of course that, despite his requests to play as a central striker, he has spent much of his career operating on the flank, and he has been particularly afflicted by injury: since joining Arsenal in January 2006, he has missed 119 games – more than three full league seasons – due to various injuries. Aside fromsignalling the score to jeering Tottenham fans from his stretcher after rupturing cruciate ligaments – an endearingly gentle riposte, as if Tim Henman had unveiled new heights of mischievousness – he has barely registered a complaint, working hard to make yet another comeback.

In the two seasons before this one he started a total of 13 league games. Little wonder his career feels as though it has never quite got going, that even as others have risen and fallen, he remains forever the fragile teenager with the searing pace who exploded into the public consciousness with a goal on his full debut, for Southampton away to Leeds, while still only 16. The injuries, at least, seem never to have sapped his speed.

The question, though, is whether he can ever be anything more. After all, this is a player who fell into football almost accidentally; he did not grow up yearning to be a footballer. When he was nine he played in goal because he thought saving penalties would be exciting, only to realise that there were not all that many penalties and that he found the other parts of goalkeeping a bit dull. He played his first competitive game, for Steventon Boys in Oxfordshire, at 10 because they were a player short and, to the amazement of everybody, not least his father, scored a hat-trick.

 

[Sir Tokyo Sexwale]

Only once managed 10+ goals per season. Some interesting stuff...

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/oct/01/theo-walcott-arsenal-prodigy-centre-forward

 

[Abridged]

 

Walcott is 26. He cannot be a great hope forever, living in a limbo of possibility, forever on the verge of breaking through without ever quite doing it. This is a player who, in 2008, eviscerated Croatia for England, scoring a hat-trick as they lost a competitive game in the Maksimir for the first time, yet only once has he managed 10 league goals in a season.

Arsenal’s Champions League experience means nothing as same old naivety continues

Amy Lawrence

Read more

It hasn’t helped of course that, despite his requests to play as a central striker, he has spent much of his career operating on the flank, and he has been particularly afflicted by injury: since joining Arsenal in January 2006, he has missed 119 games – more than three full league seasons – due to various injuries. Aside fromsignalling the score to jeering Tottenham fans from his stretcher after rupturing cruciate ligaments – an endearingly gentle riposte, as if Tim Henman had unveiled new heights of mischievousness – he has barely registered a complaint, working hard to make yet another comeback.

In the two seasons before this one he started a total of 13 league games. Little wonder his career feels as though it has never quite got going, that even as others have risen and fallen, he remains forever the fragile teenager with the searing pace who exploded into the public consciousness with a goal on his full debut, for Southampton away to Leeds, while still only 16. The injuries, at least, seem never to have sapped his speed.

The question, though, is whether he can ever be anything more. After all, this is a player who fell into football almost accidentally; he did not grow up yearning to be a footballer. When he was nine he played in goal because he thought saving penalties would be exciting, only to realise that there were not all that many penalties and that he found the other parts of goalkeeping a bit dull. He played his first competitive game, for Steventon Boys in Oxfordshire, at 10 because they were a player short and, to the amazement of everybody, not least his father, scored a hat-trick.

 

[_00_deathscar]

Remember his run for the Adebayor goal in the European Cup quarter finals?

 

Could have done with a player like that in our 08-09 run.

[Ibby]

I was there in the anny Road end and that c*** adebayor did that f***ing dance right in front of us. Wasn't dancing after though. Great great times (f*** off fsg)

[_00_deathscar]

I was there in the anny Road end and that c*** adebayor did that f***ing dance right in front of us. Wasn't dancing after though. Great great times (f*** off fsg)

Was still dancing when Babel went up the other end