Theo: Bright future for Gunners

Theo: Bright future for Gunners

Published Sep. 5, 2011 9:15 a.m. ET

Walcott has two years remaining on his contract and would presumably not want to be experiencing any more hammerings like the one he suffered at Manchester United next month before discussions begin over another. Manager Arsene Wenger has done his bit, spending £40million on five new players prior to the transfer window closing, including Mikel Arteta and Germany defender Per Mertesacker. And now Walcott is convinced the Gunners are back on an upward curve again. "I'm not worried about the future at Arsenal at all," he said. "New faces tend to get everyone bubbling. We all have to lift our spirits and hopefully those new signings will do the job." Such was the manner of that eight-goal mauling at Manchester United that Wenger felt he had to act, even though he had felt there was enough talent in his squad to cope with the departures of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri. "I have never seen Arsenal do that in all the years I have been there." said Walcott of the deadline-day frenzy. "A lot of teams leave it until the last minute so it was interesting to see. "We got rid of two great players but we've brought a few in and I look forward to seeing them on Wednesday." Even now, Walcott struggles for an explanation why such an extraordinary result, Arsenal's worst since the 19th century, occurred. "There's no point sitting and sulking about what you could have done better," he said. "The better team won on the day. "A lot of people dropped their heads as soon as that fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth goals went in. Maybe the organisation wasn't quite there either "I wouldn't say we gave up. We tried our best. But Manchester United were very strong and scored some great goals. "The dressing room was completely dead afterwards. It is hard to recover from that result and it could hurt a lot of players. "But Arsenal are a big club. You have to be able to react to those sort of moments."

ADVERTISEMENT
share