Arsenal: Theo Walcott Admission Absolutely, Brutally Brilliant

Arsenal winger Theo Walcott was brutally honest after the Crystal Palace match and at this point, why not? Ignore all the haters, Theo.

Arsenal’s humiliating 3-0 loss to Crystal Palace was chock full of everything we have come to fear within the Gunner’s side. Lethargy. Hopelessness. Spinelessness. It was all there.

And after the match, Theo Walcott was brutally honest with his comments. There was no “hey, we will bounce back,” or “time to rebound,” this was different. This was… well, honest.

"All we can do is apologise for that performance tonight. We thought we had bounced back from that bad patch with the draw against Manchester City and win against West Ham. It doesn’t look like it after this. That wasn’t us tonight. We are all disappointed in the changing room, like the fans are – we let them down. We don’t go out there to lose games, we work the best we can. Tonight it didn’t happen. We can only apologise. They wanted it more. You could sense that from the kick-off."

Pleasant? Not at all. It sucks to hear one of our players admitting something like this. It’s just a painful reminder that they know how much they are under-performing, but they aren’t able to do anything about it. That is tough to stomach.

Naturally, this admission is not being too positively reviewed. Jamie Carragher in particular has gone off the deep end in his berating of the speedy Englishman.

But I don’t see the problem here. The only problem that I see is that I am yet again defending Theo Walcott, and that makes me feel all kinds of gross.

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Think of it this way – Arsenal is in a pit right now, and we supporters are quite tired of hearing and seeing the same damn things over and over. It’s as if this is the new normal. The new thing.

To hear Walcott come out and break the mold and make these painful admissions, well, at least that makes me feel like someone gets it. Someone realizes that this just isn’t right and he is willing to empathize with the fans a bit.

What would you prefer, Walcott saying this, or Alex Iwobi with his brilliant “the fans need to be patient”?

Iwobi showed a bullheadedness that felt like that same disconnect from the fans that Arsene Wenger has often showed. As if they don’t feel the same things we feel when we are subjected to such displays.

It was clear that this bothered Walcott. And honestly, I saw it on the pitch too. Don’t get me wrong, he was just as ineffective as everyone else, but his effort was better than I remember in the past.

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Maybe Walcott is taking this captaincy thing seriously. Maybe he is more of a competitor than we think. Who knows. All I know is this is not a selfish admission. This is not a ‘save myself’ kind of statement. Walcott owned up to the failure of the club and that deserves at least some degree of respect.

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