How talented was Theo Walcott?

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Looks like he's forever going to be known as the 16 year old kid who went to 2006 world cup.

Was just looking at his career now as he only turned 31 a few years back yet seems basically finished in premier league. Is just a squad player at a team who've been bottom half in premier league for most of the season. No one even cares about him never getting called up for England for years (last cap in october 2016).

Just hype then or was there something there. He did have from memory one really good scoring season for Arsenal but he never developed into their go to match winner like Van Persie or Alexis for spells did.

Not on the scale of Wilshere but he did have a few bad injuries at key times, think he was playing well at around the point he got injured v Spurs (only remember that for the Spurs fans chucking coins at him when he was taunting them as he was going off :lol:)

Not a bad career but he only actually played in one international tournament for England which wouldn't have been foreseen in 2006.
 
Theo Walcott scored a hat trick for England once, if that counts for something
 
In all seriousness, he was a really good player. Fantastic on his best days. People just got rightfully fed up with his absolute lack of development.

It's not that he forgot how to play football or wasn't good anymore, but for some reason he just stayed the same player, and eventually, as he got older, he didn't have the same speed.

Dribbling with pace was one of his main weapons.
 
Pace merchant with no plan B, until the pace slowly went. Was unlucky with injury.
 
Never thought he was particularly exceptional to be frank. Thought it was weird they hyped him up so much after Rooney, who was clearly miles and miles ahead.
 
2010, 2011 and 2012 - he genuinely was a good player. Think 20+ goals in one of those seasons.

He was a pretty good goalscorer, calling him a pace merchant is a lazy comment. Scored some class goals, I wonder what would have happened if Arsenal backed him as a #9 at his peak, but ultimately they didn't. Ended his Arsenal career with 108 goals.

 
Will never forget his hat trick against Reading at that 2012 crazy game
 
Could have been so much more.. Still think that WC at 17 fecked him up.
 
He had two really good goalscoring seasons actually - scored 21 and 19 goals in a season. I'm not really sure what people expected him to be though - it's weird.

He was frighteningly quick, good dribbler at pace and could finish pretty well. If/when he was used well, he was actually a good enough player with the attributes he had.
 
Anyone member when he decided he wanted to be Henry? Started playing as a striker and even starting taking free kicks for them. Failed miserably
 
MyOnlySolskjaer said:
2010, 2011 and 2012 - he genuinely was a good player. Think 20+ goals in one of those seasons.

He was a pretty good goalscorer, calling him a pace merchant is a lazy comment. Scored some class goals, I wonder what would have happened if Arsenal backed him as a #9 at his peak, but ultimately they didn't. Ended his Arsenal career with 108 goals.

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This backs up my sentiment, he was more than pace, he had decent link up play, good movement and he always put up good numbers when fit. Not world class but he was one of the better wide forwards in the league at his best.
 
All the Fantasy players will remember his high scoring seasons and IIRC he was classified as a midfielder. Always thought he’s quite good and remember few class moments from him, after Arsenal completely anonymous to me
 
He had the raw materials but the main accusation against him was that he lacked football intelligence and I'm not sure he ever really put that criticism to bed. He certainly proved unable to develop his game much, or even just improve the quality of his decision making as much as he really needed to.
 
Had potential ,he didn't develop his game at crucial periods of his career,maybe because of application and injuries.
I have seen pace merchants add more strings to their bow.If he did he would been half as good as Beckham that the English press said that he was .
 
Average as feck. Nani for instance was twice the player, and Arsenal fans I know still have hard time accepting that
 
Talent? Not much at all. His good period came due to coaching and hard work and even then he was hardly a top 4 player.

Talent is obvious to see early on and there was nothing to see other than pace with Walcott for a long while.
 
Average. Pace was electric but he wasn't a natural finisher. Yes, there were glimpses of brilliance but he was never consistent and rarely delivered when it mattered.

You were always expecting him to kick on and become a better player. However, his demeanour suggested he was happy with his lot (ludicrously good contract) and was just playing for time towards the end of his Arsenal days.

Very happy Everton came in for him.
 
Kostov said:
Average as feck. Nani for instance was twice the player, and Arsenal fans I know still have hard time accepting that
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This forums Nani love amazes me all the time. The man is arguably the most frustrating footballer I've seen play for us. He's twice the player of very few really poor players, Walcott isn't one of them.
 
RooneyLegend said:
This forums Nani love amazes me all the time. The man is arguably the most frustrating footballer I've seen play for us. He's twice the player of very few really poor players, Walcott isn't one of them.
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From 2010-2012 he was indisputably one of our best and most important players.

After that he became less influential but people are justified in their praise. The fact he was technically excellent is also a factor. He was a joy to watch.
 
Came to football a little too late. Always lacked a little something of the base understanding of the game. He was quite naturally good at the game and had exceptional gifts. He didn't really have that almost sociopathic lack of self doubt that the very best have.

He might have done better without the injuries and if he had played primarily in a team less reliant on technical football.

Could still cut it at the top level on his day though.
 
Wenger campaigning for him to go to the world cup at 16 was shocking. Especially when half the seasoned pros could barely cope with the preasure of playing under that microscope showed Wenger up massively. Imagine Ferguson doing that?
 
Was never really that talented to begin with. Enough to be a good player which he was for awhile , never enough to be a top player. Just didn't have the technical quality or the football intelligence.
 
Never really developed much from being a top youngster with potential in a regular, consistent player. Had some crazy impressive moments when he was a teenager where you expect him to kick on and produce on a regular basis but never happened.

I feel the timing of his breakthrough into football wasn't great either. Teams were starting to discard playing with two upfront and Walcott couldn't really play as a lone striker due to a lack of physical prowess and back to goal play. I felt he would have been more effective as a striker in a 4-4-2 big and small man formation. He seemed to settle on to the RW but his delivery and decision making wasn't quite up to scratch.

Probably should have focused on being a LW, utilising his pace and making runs in behind. He seemed to be better at taking players on the left rather than the right.
 
Feel like he needed a veteran striker or two to constantly work with him and help him better understand the game and his own innate advantages. He came into football late, and it showed, which isn't his fault.

Arsenal and the media gassed his head at the wrong time and where he should have been learning from others, he was thrust too far into the spotlight, and from there it's almost impossible to dial it back without the player being disgruntled or those who propped him up then labelling him a failure.

Walcott wasn't a good dribbler - no idea where that notion is coming from - but thedifficulty for someone so fast is they have even finer lines to get all their touches right, lest the ball flies off from a single errant action, which is what Walcott fell foul of a lot of the time. He wasn't terrible with the ball at his feet, but for the pace he had, a better technical base would have made him a frightening proposition.

An Alan Smith or Ian Wright would have been better for him to learn from than a player like Henry who was in a different stratosphere in terms of ability, and thus how he could approach the game and get away with being a completely atypical type of striker for his era.

Walcott could have been more than he became, but that was reliant on a perfect storm for his development that ultimately wasn't there for him. In summary, he did well enough for someone whose foundations weren't established at the ages most pros are. The guy came into football with a handicap and a starting line some yards behind his fellow professionals, so from that perspective, he really can't be knocked.
 
I kept wondering if he would push on, but he never did. He stayed more or less the same and became very predictable. It’s sad that he is a forgotten figure still relatively young, but has made his money from the game and had a decent career.
 
He might've become a better player with probably another team. Majority of his career defining years (Age 20-25) were spent in an Arsenal team which had started accepted mediocrity as a norm, going from title challengers to top 4 contenders and finally not even achieving that.

It wasn't like Theo was completely over-hyped with no substance. He did have an odd good season of about 20 goals mostly to secure a contract before going down to the predictable path of injuries and inconsistency.

Before this season, I was worried that Rashford might end up with a similar trajectory of not knowing whether he's a winger or a striker and not performing exceptionally in either position.
 
I liked him but I think he wasn't used right. He just isn't good at RW. Should have been playing more in a 2 striker setup.
 
Having watched him closely at Everton for a few seasons I can confirm that him lacking a football brain is a valid criticism. He gets himself into great positions due to his ridiculous pace but he often chooses the wrong option once he gets there. He still gives the team good balance when he plays and you can still see some full backs fear that raw pace that he has but ultimately it's all for nothing because he often chooses the wrong pass and his purple patch of being a good finisher ended a couple of seasons ago.
 
His main asset was pace and a bit of trickery. When he was 16 he was supposed to learn the rest, but he never did, and it ended up that aside from that he wasn't a very good footballer. He was a bit like the guy who shows up at Sunday league in neon yellow boots and trips himself up doing stepovers.
 
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