{"id":322,"date":"2016-09-03T04:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-09-03T08:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/?p=322"},"modified":"2016-09-03T06:52:32","modified_gmt":"2016-09-03T10:52:32","slug":"jack-wilsheres-arsenal-career-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2016\/09\/03\/jack-wilsheres-arsenal-career-over\/","title":{"rendered":"Make No Mistake, Jack Wilshere’s Arsenal Career Is Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

16th February, 2011. A night etched into the memory of any Arsenal fan. The world’s best side at the time, and eventual Champions League winners that season, went to the Emirates unbeaten in the tournament and on a run of 21 consecutive La Liga fixtures without a loss.<\/p>\n

The Catalans took an early lead through\u00a0David Villa<\/strong>, but late\u00a0Robin van Persie\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Andrei Arshavin\u00a0<\/strong>goals gave the hosts a 2-1 advantage<\/a> heading into the second leg.<\/p>\n

However, that night is memorable for most not for the scoreline or for the goals scored, but for the performance of\u00a0Jack Wilshere<\/strong>, then 19 years old.<\/p>\n

Wilshere dispossesses Lionel Messi in 2011<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Countless column inches<\/a> were written about the young midfielder’s future for the club and for\u00a0England<\/strong>, and it seemed certain that a bright future lay ahead for the\u00a0Stevenage<\/strong>-born teenager.<\/p>\n

Fast forward five-and-a-half years, and Wilshere has been dropped from the England squad, and is set to make his\u00a0AFC Bournemouth\u00a0<\/strong>debut at the weekend in\u00a0the testimonial for\u00a0Warren Cummings<\/strong>, a man with one\u00a0Scotland\u00a0<\/strong>cap who recently retired after a three year spell with\u00a0Havant and Waterlooville.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Without wishing to belittle the career of Cummings, this is an apt barometer to demonstrate just how far Wilshere’s career has fallen since that night in North London.<\/p>\n

In the five seasons since the Barcelona game, Wilshere has played 4,325 minutes in the\u00a0Premier League<\/strong>, out of a possible 17,370. To put that into perspective, another ex-Arsenal man,\u00a0Abou Diaby<\/strong>, played only 200 minutes fewer in his final six years at the club, and his career will be remembered for his perennial injury status.<\/p>\n

Wilshere down injured against Manchester United in 2014\/15<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whilst that comparison may not necessarily offer insight on its own with regards to Wilshere’s future at Arsenal, it is worth bearing in mind that\u00a0Arsene Wenger<\/strong> never made Diaby available for loan in his time at the club. Nor has\u00a0he offered\u00a0Tomas Rosicky<\/strong>,\u00a0Theo Walcott<\/strong>,\u00a0Kieran Gibbs\u00a0<\/strong>or\u00a0Danny Welbeck\u00a0<\/strong>for loan after long injury setbacks.<\/p>\n

Presumably, Wenger believed that each of those players was able to offer something to the side despite their time away from the game, so kept them as options off the bench whilst working them back to full fitness. His perseverance with this method – despite its failings in the examples of Rosicky, Diaby and Walcott in particular – has continued; so by the same logic, it is clear that Wenger does not believe Wilshere can offer Arsenal anything this season.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the BBC’s\u00a0David Ornstein\u00a0<\/strong>even went as far as to suggest<\/a> that Wenger was not particularly opposed to Wilshere moving to\u00a0AC Milan\u00a0<\/strong>this season, even though their deal for him would have included an option to buy him at the end of the campaign.<\/p>\n

Conventional wisdom appears to be that this is Wenger’s last season at Arsenal. It is the final year of the three-year deal he signed in 2014. He has shown all the signs of a man soon to depart.<\/p>\n

Wenger’s Arsenal contract expires at the end of the season<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And Wilshere, a player whose career he has nurtured and overseen since he was a teenager, has two years left on his current contract.<\/p>\n

Regardless of which manager comes in to replace Wenger at the end of the season, as one undoubtedly will, they will want to mark their authority by clearing perceived ‘dead wood’ out of the club. Players like\u00a0Carl Jenkinson<\/strong>,\u00a0Gibbs<\/strong>,\u00a0Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Per Mertesacker\u00a0<\/strong>will all be likely departures, and it is hard to see how a new manager will look at Arsenal’s midfield options and think that it is worth his time to renew Wilshere’s contract.<\/p>\n

After all, Arsenal have been playing a 4-2-3-1 for several years now, and it is a formation which does not allow Jack Wilshere a spot. He does not have the pace, nor does he possess the natural width to play as a winger; he is miles behind\u00a0Mesut Ozil\u00a0<\/strong>in the number 10 role; and\u00a0Aaron Ramsey<\/strong>,\u00a0Santi Cazorla <\/strong>and\u00a0Granit Xhaka –\u00a0<\/strong>and even\u00a0Mohamed Elneny<\/strong> and\u00a0Francis Coquelin –\u00a0<\/strong>have been fit and firing for at least some of the past few seasons which Wilshere has spent on the treatment table. It is no surprise that all five are ahead of Wilshere in the battle for the two spots in the midfield pivot.<\/p>\n

There is no way back.\u00a0Which manager worthy of the Arsenal role will take the move of offering him a contract despite all the complications that would go with it rather than shipping him out?<\/p>\n

Even if Wilshere has a phenomenal season for Bournemouth, and somehow manages to play more than 25 games for the first time since 2011\/12, there will be the qualification that any of Arsenal’s wealth of options would likely stand out in a midfield alongside\u00a0Harry Arter\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Andrew Surman<\/strong>. There will be the memories of his horrendous outings on the big stage at\u00a0Euro 2016<\/strong>. There will be his terrible track record of getting involved in off-pitch incidents and making front page headlines in British tabloids.<\/p>\n

Wilshere in Bournemouth training on Friday<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is difficult to see how a new manager will think that anything Wilshere has done in the past six seasons worthy of a new contract. And by next summer, he will be 25, and unable to live off one good showing against Barcelona as a 19-year-old in the same way he has done for so long.<\/p>\n

So even though the fans have stuck by Wilshere through thick and thin, it is time for them to recognise that his move to\u00a0Dean Court\u00a0<\/strong>will not re-ignite his Arsenal career, regardless of how it turns out.<\/p>\n

It is a great shame that Jack Wilshere’s Arsenal career will be remembered similarly to\u00a0Jamie Redknapp<\/strong>‘s at\u00a0Liverpool\u00a0<\/strong>or\u00a0Darren Anderton<\/strong>‘s at\u00a0Tottenham<\/strong>, but that is the sad truth.<\/p>\n

He will be yet another English midfielder whose career tells the story of unfulfilled talent; of great promise blighted by injury and loss of form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16th February, 2011. A night etched into the memory of any Arsenal fan. The world’s best side at the time, and eventual Champions League winners that season, went to the Emirates unbeaten in the tournament and on a run of 21 consecutive La Liga fixtures without a loss. The Catalans took an early lead through\u00a0David […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1026,"featured_media":325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2,3],"tags":[159,32738,158,40],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-featured","category-premier-league","tag-afc-bournemouth","tag-arsenal-fixtures","tag-jack-wilshere","tag-premier-league"],"modified_by":"Matthew Roller","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}