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Jack Wilshere Proves He’s Ready for First Team Football in Arsenal Return
By Josh Sippie
Arsenal were at the receiving end of two lucky goals to get up on top of Hull City and they’d add another more well-earned one later on. Aaron Ramsey and Alexis Sanchez were the stars of the show with Mesut Ozil slipping in some brilliant passes to join the duo and Santi Cazorla displaying brilliant two-foot ability as well.
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But the man who showed the most effort was only given 30 minutes to do so: Jack Wilshere
The first thing the antsy midfielder did was make a wonderful penetrating run into the Hull City defense, bypassing several defenders on his way to a crunching tackle.
Welcome back, Jack.
He was a hound after the ball, much like Alexis Sanchez. He threaded in some impressive passes in the penalty area and made no glaringly-errant touches. Off the ball, he backed away from no tackles and made some pretty stout defensive stops. He finished with some nice numbers too: 31 touches, 90% pass completion, one key pass and one tackle (via WhoScored.com).
In very unfortunate circumstances, he missed a goal by a no-call hand ball, but he showed a knack for putting himself in goal scoring positions (like Aaron Ramsey) and if he keeps doing that, the goals will come.
In short, Jack Wilshere looked like he had missed no time at all.
When Wilshere went down against Manchester United earlier in the year, he was in some of the best form of his career. All that we just saw against Hull City was fleshed out over several impressive games and that’s what made this injury the most frustrating: we had finally seen what he was capable of.
The trick now is getting Jack Wilshere enough time to build off of this momentum. He looked absolutely thrilled to be coming in the game and he made all Arsenal supporters thrilled that he was in the game.
One of the reasons I wanted to see Jack Wilshere in the starting lineup as soon as possible was to get him some time to mesh into the new Arsenal system and to reconstruct that chemistry with his team mates. Jack Wilshere looked like he has been playing in this system his whole life (which, technically he has).
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I get that this is only one game and only thirty minutes of that game; that it was in a game that was well in hand and a game that Arsenal just had to play around with to hold onto. But for Jack Wilshere, it was a giant step in the right direction. He can only work with what he’s given and his thirty minutes against Hull City were massive. They were thirty positive minutes where he looked absolutely thrilled to be back on the pitch. When he was tackled, he didn’t appeal for fouls, he just popped up and got back to work.
If this is what Jack Wilshere can be for the long run, then Arsenal are in for a treat. Maybe it won’t be so hard for him to get back into first team action.
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