Jack Wilshere can become a Bournemouth great – just keep him away from our nightclubs!
One lifelong Cherries fan has his say on Arsenal midfielder's shock loan move to Dean Court
DO not adjust your screens: Jack Wilshere is an AFC Bournemouth player.
Yes, the Arsenal star, capped 34 times by England, and who once bossed a Barcelona midfield featuring Xavi, Iniesta and Sergio Busquets in front of 60,000 fans, could next weekend be turning out for the Cherries against West Brom at Dean Court in front of fewer than 12,000 people.
When Wilshere made his Premier League debut as Arsenal’s youngest player in September 2008, Bournemouth were facing an uphill battle to stay in the Football League, having been deducted 17 points for failing to exit bankruptcy.
However, eight years on, with Bournemouth having gone from strength to strength under the remarkable managerial reign of Eddie Howe, Wilshere has gone backwards – and their paths converged when he today joined the Dorset club on loan for the season, to become one of the best players to ever pull on a Cherries shirt. (Although George Best, Rio Ferdinand and Jermain Defoe would certainly have something to say about that.)
It’s remarkable, given how highly he has been rated over the years, to think Wilshere is still only 24. (He wasn’t even born when I was a mascot at Shrewsbury away in May 1989, but that’s another story.)
Some have suggested Wilshere could already be heading for the football scrapheap. But this move to Bournemouth could be the best decision he’s ever made – and the fag-smoking, nightclub-scrapping midfielder is not exactly famed for making great decisions.
Your average football fan will be surprised by the move – and yes, on the surface, it seems a crazy decision by a man who was in the Euro 2016 squad and was being chased by AC Milan, Roma and Crystal Palace.
But if you really think about it, it could work out well for him. Above all else, Wilshere needs a run of games, which he simply won’t get at Arsenal. Is he really going to get that at AC Milan. Doubtful. Roma? Probably not. At Bournemouth, if fit, he will play every single match.
Equally, he seems like a bit of a home bird, and Bournemouth isn’t too far from his family in London. Plus nothing we know about Wilshere suggests he is the sort of bloke for go in for a bit of continental culture. (Nightclubs don’t count – although of course Bournemouth has plenty of those, Jack… Halo, Aruba and Camel Bar, to name just three.)
If Wilshere wants to get back into the Arsenal side then he needs to prove he can play the Arsenal way. For all of Bournemouth’s faults under Howe – a leaky defence, being the most concerning – we do play a similar high-tempo, quick-passing, attacking style to the Gunners, while Crystal Palace, well, do not. He met both their manager, Alan Pardew, and Howe. He chose Howe. Enough said.
Ultimately, too, the decision appears to come down – as ever – to money, with Palace apparently unwilling to pay a £2million fee and cover his hefty wages.
Yet even at, say, £5million it is a no-brainer for Bournemouth. If he can stay injury-free (and that is a BIG *if*), Wilshere should form a tenacious and creative partnership with Irish international midfielder Harry Arter, and help develop Lewis Cook, a youngster recently signed from Leeds and himself billed as a future England player.
Creativity in the Number 10 role is something that has been seriously lacking for Bournemouth in our opening three games of this season, and hopefully he can rectify that.
Meanwhile, at the back, his ability to cover ground and break up play could protect our dodgy defence, which saw only woeful Aston Villa concede more league goals last term.
Wilshere’s signing is a huge contrast to last year – our first in the Premier League – when, having lost winger Max Gradel and left-back and record signing Tyrone Mings to long-term injuries – we bought in Glenn Murray and Tomas Andrade (nope, still no idea…) and every Bournemouth
fan is rightly excited by the news.
I won’t pretend it makes up for Howe’s patchy, even questionable, recent transfer policy that has seen fans pulling their hair out at his failure to sort out the glaring gaps in defence.