Arsenal and Jack Wilshere: What could have been

Jack Wilshere has announced that he will leave Arsenal when his contract expires at the end of June. His career in north London is very much a case of what could have been.

Regret is a horrible feeling. Regret over something that is beyond is your control is even more gut-wrenching. Like an insatiable dagger to the heart, it has a piercing penetration of what the past could and perhaps should have been. There are few better instances of such pain than the wrinkled lines etched across Jack Wilshere’s face as he cowers over to clutch his battered and bruised ankle for one more time.

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The 2010/2011 season was a remarkable one. A midfield triumvirate of Alex Song, Cesc Fabregas and the aforementioned Wilshere played with panache and precision. Their passing was poetic, their movement, fluid, their creativity on full display. The future was bright.

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And even when Fabregas departed at the end of the year, much to the disgruntled jeers but begrudging acceptance of the fans — it was Barcelona, after all –, Arsenal’s future was still in a very safe and vibrant pair of hands. If only we were to know that those hands would be frail and fragile, scuppered by a soft underbelly that had little to do with themselves and almost everything to do with this horrible thing we call ‘luck’.

Wilshere’s inability to realise the dazzling potential that Fabregas lauded was not actually an inability. It was just bad luck. Could he have changed his playing style to better protect his body, and in particular his ankles? Perhaps. But then that would have taken a substantial edge away from his game: his consistent success in luring defenders into challenges that they believe they can make, only for the shifty midfielder to side-step his way around the futile lunges at the last possible moment, was an integral part of his game, it made him who he was. To lose that would have been to lose a part of his footballing identity.

All in all, it is difficult to look back at the wretched injury history of Wilshere and think little more than ‘poor guy’. Biologically, he is injury prone. The results speak for themselves. Even during his rehabilitation, Arsenal would regularly set a time frame for his return, only for Wilshere to miss it, sometimes by as much as a year. Hardly his fault.

And in this last season, we saw the full effects that years of injuries have had on him. Once he was able to play following a broken leg the year prior, Wilshere remained fit for the whole campaign. By the end of the year, he had established himself as a key contributor to the starting XI. But his contributions were not those effervescent, visceral, vivacious moments of years gone by. He was that tad softer in the tackle, that step slower when he looked to burst away from a defender, that little bit more inconsistent in his distribution. The time to leave had arrived.

In his statement, Wilshere clearly wanted to stay. His commitment to this club has been unrivalled. He truly loves Arsenal. But his love for football was that much more and, at 26 years of age and after just missing out on the England World Cup squad, football is now his priority. Wilshere needs to play. Unai Emery wasn’t going to let him.

That is not a slight on Emery. His performances perhaps dictated as much. The only reason to keep him was a romantic one, an idea that he could finally rekindle the joy of yesteryear. And romantic ideas rarely work in professional sport. Their optimism veers on naivety; they lack the realism and ruthlessness required to win. Emery is right. It’s time to move on.

Wilshere, then, will go someplace else. It was strange enough seeing him in a Bournemouth shirt knowing that he would return. Seeing him stride out in another team’s colours permanently will be a very odd and unnerving experience.

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It is with sadness that I see him leave. I will fondly remember that 2010/11 season. But the time has come. Wilshere needs to leave. There’s only so long that you can ask, ‘What could have been?’