Jack Wilshere's loutish behaviour begs quesion: How much longer can Arsenal and England pin hopes on him?
Jack Wilshere had apparently been drinking for almost 24 hours straight. Which seems quite a feat, when you reflect that his contribution to the FA Cup final victory amounted to all of 15 minutes, writes Oliver Brown
Jack Wilshere has often been bracketed as the new Paul Gascoigne. It is an argument that would have some cogency if were talking about Gascoigne circa 1996, stupefied beyond any rational thought as he leant back in his Hong Kong ‘dentist’s chair’ and had half a bottle of Drambuie squirted down his throat.
For Wilshere, by his asinine goading of Tottenham fans during Arsenal’s FA Cup victory parade, has given the greatest testament yet to his fundamental immaturity. He looked very far from the figure touted as a future linchpin of the England midfield, the cultured player whose magic wand of a left foot underpins Arsenal’s entire aesthetic, and more like the tanked-up oaf at whom you would inwardly shudder as he reeled out of your nearest Wetherspoon’s.
Wilshere had apparently been drinking for almost 24 hours straight. Which seemed quite a feat, when you reflect that his contribution to the Cup final victory amounted to all of 15 minutes. So much for the Arsenal party line that the FA Cup was essentially a secondary bauble and that they should be mounting a more concerted challenge for the Premier League. Wilshere, scoffing at any such idea, used his own tangential part in his team’s triumph to celebrate as if he had just won the World Cup on his wedding day.
“What do we think of Tottenham?” he slurred into his microphone atop the Arsenal bus. “And what do we think of s---?” Oh, by the cringe. If you looked across at Wilshere’s team-mates, they were all shuffling in embarrassment. As for Arsène Wenger, one of the game’s finest intellects and a manager fiercely preoccupied with how his charges uphold Arsenal’s image, one could only guess at the mortification.
This was a performance to have made even Freddie Flintoff, who notoriously celebrated England’s 2005 Ashes series win with a Botham-esque all-nighter, blanch a touch. Flintoff’s shambling, red-eyed display upon a visit to Downing Street at least made for a comedic escapade. Wilshere’s chanting was just ugly and charmless, pandering to the fans’ most bovine instincts.
It was extraordinary that a member of Arsenal’s sizeable public relations department was not on hand to muzzle him. It used to be, when Theo Walcott was on duty for the England Under-21s, that he was banned from speaking for fear of uttering anything that might attract the club’s disapproval. At this rate, Wilshere ought to be given a permanent media minder, so fast is he becoming Arsenal’s liability-in-chief.
Smoking in a Las Vegas swimming pool, dragging on a shisha pipe, inciting supporters with a beery diatribe: Wilshere’s off-field conduct reads at one level like the standard fecklessness of youth. But he invariably receives a free pass by virtue of his undeniable talent. We are urged to give the lad a break, because he is impressionable and vulnerable and we cannot risk upsetting such a fine England prospect. And then there is the hoary old saw that he has grown up, because, you see, he is a father now. Well, Gascoigne was a father by the time he was Wilshere's age, but he was never exactly a role model for a generation.
The romantics claimed that Arsenal’s joyous demolition of Aston Villa provided a precious palliative for the game after Fifa's week of ignominy. If that is the case, then Wilshere’s juvenile posturing left an acrid aftertaste. It falls to Wenger, surely, to try to cut through his pupil’s loutish behaviour.
At 23, Wilshere is not a child, even if he insists upon acting like a boneheaded brute. On that bus the midfielder appeared far removed from a world-beater or, indeed, the ambassadorial figure that Wenger seeks in all his protégés. He just came across as incorrigibly callow.
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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory
