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Arsenal vs Red Star Belgrade: Jack Wilshere on the wrong carousel
By Josh Sippie
Arsenal will be doing the typical rotation for their midweek clash with Red Star Belgrade, which is troubling for the long-term prospects of Jack Wilshere
Arsenal’s upcoming match with Red Star Belgrade figures to be entertaining. The Serbs are known for their raucous fan base and their no-nonsense physicality. It’s the kind of match where you just hope you can get a clean win and not suffer anything unnecessary.
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Jack Wilshere will be there. Right in the middle of everything. I can’t help but think the Englishman will be a tad bit fired up given how he was robbed of the opportunity to make his Premier League debut against the Hornets.
I worry that a fired up Jack Wilshere might relapse into overly-aggressive Wilshere, but you have top assume he’s in a more mature status than he was back when he was headbutting things for the fun of it.
What does actively worry me, however, is the fact that Jack Wilshere being caught in this rotation against is like him getting on the wrong merry-go-round. The starting XI is going to play again three days later and then Wilshere will be back on the pitch when the League Cup comes back around two days after that.
It’s a tough rotation to break – impossible even.
Meaning that the likelihood of Wilshere sneaking into our first team set-up, where he rightly belongs, is going to be put on hold for even longer. As of right now, I feel like priority No. 1 should be injecting life into that starting XI.
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Wilshere is one way to do that. Sticking with Mesut Ozil is not a way to do that.
Breaking the rotation of things will require added effort that I don’t think Wenger is willing to put in and the likelihood of him starting Wilshere in one of these midweek fixtures and the flipping and putting him into the starting XI in the Premier League is exactly zero. It won’t happen.
That’s why this past international break had me so excited. It was the absolute perfect opportunity to switch things up, get Wilshere back to where he can make a bigger impact and try to keep the momentum going in a positive direction.
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That opportunity was missed and now we will have to sit by and wait, while hoping that Wilshere’s spotty, minuscule appearances as a substitute can win over a manager that apparently needs a little more evidence to do what he should have already done.