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Wenger Explains Why Walcott Didn’t Start vs Hull

By on December 5, 2013

Arsene Wenger has explained why Theo Walcott was surprisingly left out of Arsenal’s starting eleven against Hull City last night.

The winger has recently returned to action following a two month lay-off due to an abdomen injury and had appeared as a substitute in our three previous games heading into the Hull match on Wednesday.

I, like the majority of bloggers and pundits, expected Theo to make his first start in seven weeks yesterday to help get the winger back up to full match fitness ahead of a packed festive period fixture list.

However, when the teams were announced at around 6.45pm last night, Walcott was once again named among the subs. I presumed Wenger had decided to keep him fresh for the upcoming games against Everton, Napoli, Man City and Chelsea.

But speaking after our 2-0 win, the boss revealed that Theo has been suffering from sickness and had not trained in the last week, so was therefore not ready to start the game.

Wenger told Arsenal.com:

on whether he was tempted to play Walcott…

Walcott couldn’t practise before we played our last game at Cardiff because he was sick. When we came back on Monday he was sick again, so he just had a little session. In the last week he has not practised at all, so I was never tempted to start him. He has not played for seven weeks and he did very little in the last week. He is not completely ready.

So it turns out Walcott was the latest player to be struck down by illness. We’ve had quite a lot of players being out sick recently. Hopefully it’s nothing to worry about but it is rather curious why so many of the first team have been taken ill.

Coincidence? Have the players not had their flu jabs? A Spurs-supporting chef getting his own back for ‘lasagne-gate’?! All of the above?!

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