Arsene Wenger has heaped praise on Theo Walcott after his two goals helped us to a 4-0 win in the Carling Cup fourth-round game at Newcastle.
Theo got the chance to get 90 minutes under his belt after an injury lay-off and he delivered the goods and the goals and AW was delighted. He said: ”Walcott is more composed in front of goal this season. His first touch is better. He is an intelligent boy and because of that he will always improve. He was flying at the start of the season and now he is just coming back from injury. You can see today that he is ready to go to another level.
”You are always happy when your strikers score. They got through the game without injury and now physically they have a couple of days to recover. I’m glad they both got through the 90 minutes. At his pace, when you get stopped, you are always vulnerable. He got one or two tackles and he got away with it because he did not have his full weight on his standing leg. But (when he was injured for England against) against Switzerland, for example, what can you do? He is not vulnerable because of his injuries, it was a tackle. When you play against a player who is so quick, sometimes you can mistime tackles. It’s not necessarily always that you want to hit him, but he is so quick that you think, ‘Now I can get the ball’, and it has gone away.”
Great finish by Bendy last night as well and Wojciech Szczesny looked assured too. For me Craig Eastmond looked no more than average and Bacary Sagna didn’t have his best game ever. Koscielny and Djourou looked untroubled and Eboue seemed to enjoy surging forward. Denilson was steady while Tomas Rosicky showed glimpses of his class. As did Vela. Overall we kept the ball magnificently and displayed a calmness while we waited and probed for the chances to grabs the goals. Cesc and JET gave us some extra thrust when they came on, too. Shame about Gibbs. We must hope it isn’t anything too serious.
Now focus switches to the home game against West Ham on Saturday and former Gunner nutty Nigel Winterburn has given his thoughts on the fixture. He said: “West Ham have very little hope coming to the Emirates on Saturday. They have had a poor start to the season but I still feel the squad there is not bottom of the table material. They will put up a fight but I don’t think they have the defensive quality to take anything from Saturday’s game.
“Arsenal still have that West Brom defeat in their heads though, but that may be a good though. Complacency is the only threat to them not taking all three points on Saturday.”
Let’s hope so…
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