Tony Leen

ASK any editor what’s the toughest slot to fill, and he or she’ll tell you the columnist who sells newspapers. I imagine it must be the same for tv pundits, so hat’s off to ESPN for their recruitment of Craig Burley, Rebecca Lowe (everything that Kelly Dalglish isn’t) and Chris Waddle. Quite the threesome in terms of questions and analysis sans cliche.
Maybe it’s the fact that Waddle once got me a few words with Paul Gascoigne at Italia 90, but you’ve got to respect a winger hardly blessed with jet-heeled pace who made over sixty appearances for England. The Geordie had to rely on a delicious left foot, an innate winger’s ability to beat the full back, and most importantly when speed isn’t your main weapon, precise delivery.
Everything that Waddles was, and is, Theo Walcott isn’t, which might explain the former’s withering attack on the Arsenal youngster this week. ‘Walcott’s a football idiot’ would be an accurate if unflattering paraphrase of Waddle’s criticism on BBC Radio.
Ian Wright concurs: “When you watch him it looked like he hasn’t learned much about anything in respect of movement off the defender, receiving the ball and going past people. He just seems to like to get the ball and hammer at people without any thought.”
Graham Taylor didn’t feel inclined to disagree and there are many in the plush red seats of the Emirates Stadium every other weekend of the same view. What’s really mystifying some Gooners is Arsene Wenger’s (even for him) extraordinary degree of patience with the twinkle-toed one. Whatever about agreeing with Waddle, it’s a brave man who’ll disagree with Wenger’s judgement of nascent football talent.The French man believes that football watchers have been too hasty in seeking miracles from the 21 year old. “I believe in him because he has a fantastic attitude, he’s an intelligent boy and he is highly motivated. These players always improve.
“Don’t worry for him,” Wenger said. "Theo has not only a football brain, but he has a brain – that means he will continue to develop at a very quick pace.”

Allowing for the fact that Walcott’s missed a lot of the season through niggling injury and that startling levels of ineptitude in recent outings (against Liverpool and Sunderland) have emptied his levels of confidence, Waddle’s criticism are notable for their laser-like precision - “People keep saying he's young but Wayne Rooney understood the game at 16, 17. I've never seen him develop. He just doesn't understand the game for me - where to be running, when to run inside a full back, when to just play a one-two. It's all off the cuff. I just don't think he's got a football brain and he's going to have problems. He's at a great club where they play fantastic football week-in, week-out, and I'm just surprised he's never developed his game.”
The fact that any decent supporter can recall his two standout moments - the mazy run to tee up Emmanuel Adebayor in the Champions League at Anfield and the England hat-trick in Zagreb - speaks volumes for the argument that they were exceptional moments in every sense of the word.
And yet, any Arsenal fan's rite of passage included Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch and the memorable passage on Gus Caeser. Similarly, Walcott had to be the best player in his school, he had to be the best prospect at under age level, and he must have been the pick of the crop to be catapulted into the Southampton first team. Didn't he?

Wenger has been reduced to cursing with exasperation at a recent press conference when asked whether Walcott would go to the World Cup with England. The unspoken thought was ‘let’s get him playing properly here first’.
Quite the test of Wenger, I’d say. Walcott looks tactically naive, lacks bravery and worst of all, appears to lack the confidence of his team-mates. There’s a growing sense that his colleagues on the pitch don’t trust him with the ball any more. Either that (against Sunderland) or they also sensed the rumblings around the stadium when Walcott coughed up possession once more.
Wenger’s patience is being tested too, but it may have paid off in the case of Emmanuel Eboue, who has been Arsenal’s best player in recent weeks. The Emirates crowd had reduced the Ivorian to a quivering wreck at one point, but the manager has won out on that one by sticking by his man.
The manager is evidently of the view that one goal could trigger a rush of confidence for the England winger, but after a bright start at Wembley on Wednesday against Egypt, when he teed up Frank Lampard for a simple chance, he was quickly found out by the African Cup of Nations champions and was withdrawn at half time.
Walcott burned Sunderland's George McCartney in Arsenal's last home game, but it came to nought. The Arsenal manager has enough injury issues going on without having to coerce a performance out of his winger. Indeed, it will be interesting to see if Arsenal start Walcott at home to cellar dwellers Burnley tomorrow.