Arsenal 6 Blackpool 0:YOU HAVE just scored a hat-trick in a thumping home win, you have the match-ball signed by your team-mates and, after recent trials and tribulations, the headlines are ready to glow positively for you. There is the understandable urge to stick on Match of the Day, relive the goals and revel in one or two plaudits. After all, it is the first hat-trick of your club career.
For Theo Walcott, though, there always seems to be a sting in the tale and the pundit Alan Hansen provided it on Saturday night. Only the Scot knows why he decided the moment was right to jump on a bandwagon set in motion by Chris Waddle to criticise Walcott for a perceived lack of football intelligence.
The Arsenal winger scored three, the third of which was a beauty, and laid on excellent chances for Andrey Arshavin and Marouane Chamakh (twice) – the first one for Arshavin coming after he had time to weigh up the final ball. But Hansen chose to highlight Walcott’s 30th-minute miss, blazed high when clean through, and a poorly conceived low cross.
Hansen argued when Walcott has time to think he mucks things up, maybe because he was introduced to the game relatively late and therefore he has no natural feel for what to do or “no football brain”. Yet it is a different story, Hansen suggested, when Walcott relies on his instincts which, presumably, are not linked to intelligence or any type of ingrained feel for the game. All very confusing.
The wider point, however, involved the expectation levels that press down on Walcott’s shoulders, those that, after a man-of-the-match display, can lead to him being slated on national television. What does he have to do to win acceptance from his critics? “We forget Theo is only 21 years old,” Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said, “and most of the big players in your country had not started their international careers at 21. We forget that, because he has been on the circuit for three or four years, he is only a young boy.”
Walcott’s exuberance still reminds you of that. High on the euphoria of his hat-trick, he almost made for the dressing room at full-time without the match ball. But there is a steely edge to his professionalism and a determination to roll with the punches to prove his true worth.
There has been no bigger setback than his omission by Fabio Capello from the England World Cup squad in the summer after an injury-blighted season. “I had a nice little break mentally through the summer so I could think about things and it’s just pushing on now,” Walcott said.
Wenger reiterated he saw Walcott evolving into a central striker, and he appears blessed with creative and attacking options wherever he looks. Tomas Rosicky was outstanding in the free role behind Chamakh while the mercurial Arshavin was in the mood. Blackpool had had five goals knocked past them if not the stuffing knocked out of them when Wenger introduced Cesc Fabregas and Robin van Persie as 62nd-minute substitutes.
Blackpool came to play and the manager Ian Holloway looked to go forward even after the 31st-minute dismissal of Ian Evatt for a professional foul on Chamakh. “I looked at my watch after the sending-off, they were 2-0 up and there was all that time left, and I thought, ‘Holy mackerel’,” Holloway said. “Luckily for me, it was only six.”
Walcott tormented left-back Stephen Crainey, and the rest of the defence with more than just his pace. His best moment was his hat-trick goal, drifting from right to left, and finishing with his left foot into the far corner.
Guardian Service
