Theo Walcott has admitted that the squad don’t have a clue what’s going on in regards to Arsene Wenger’s future at Arsenal.
Speaking to the Evening Standard after Arsenal’s second 5-1 defeat to Bayern Munich this season, the forward claimed that the players just want to concentrate on football and take some of the heat off the manager.
“The players are like everybody else — we don’t really know what’s going on,” the 27-year-old admitted. “We just want to try to focus on the football.
“The manager is focused on us. You can see how passionate he is with us from the way he talks to us in the meetings.
“He will take this on himself but us players need to look at ourselves. The manager has been taking a lot of flak in recent weeks and us players have been accepting it, but we can’t.
“We need to take the pressure off the manager and that will happen by performances. Who knows what the manager will do? Players just want to play football for this club and do well for the manager.”
Walcott scored Arsenal’s only goal on Tuesday night and, along with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, was one of the best players on the pitch – wearing red, that is.
He’s got a point. Although Arsene Wenger willingly takes most of the stick for the way the team is performing, he’s not the only person to blame. The players still have to go out there and do a job, and while you could argue that they’re just carrying out the manager’s instructions, I highly doubt Wenger is telling them to go out there, play out of position, stop tracking back and basically run around like headless chickens wading through treacle. Although that might explain a lot if he was.