{"id":6330,"date":"2022-07-12T00:30:34","date_gmt":"2022-07-11T23:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6330"},"modified":"2022-07-17T08:54:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T07:54:43","slug":"a-genius-thwarted-by-circumstance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6330","title":{"rendered":"A genius thwarted by circumstance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:594px;\"><div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/185346929\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div><div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:75.084175% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/185346929?et=nutHlEICQXBnIOuTUfHeRQ&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=rIA9PQjSkRkOv-f3g2HB3ka6ENit0o1HouYve5WgGUY=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\" width=\"594\" height=\"446\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s begin with a bit of fantasising. You, reader, have been commissioned to write the biography of Jack Wilshere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How would you begin? Would you follow chronology &#8212; the young lad born in Hitchin, an obvious football prodigy, and chart his career through time from there? Would you begin at the moment he ran onto the field to become the youngest player in Arsenal history? Might it be that very special night, undoubtedly the greatest night in Emirates history so far, when Arsenal came from behind to beat Barcelona in the Champions League? That was a Barcelona side containing Messi, Villa, Iniesta, Xavi, Busquets and a whole host of superstars. Yet that glorious evening no star shone more brightly than Jack Wilshere. You have other options. Would you begin when he was first called up for England or when he gave a sublime two-goal performance against Slovenia to evoke comparisons with Gazza? Perhaps that wonderful team goal slotted home against Norwich would be your starting point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe on the other hand you are of a more gloomy persuasion. You\u2019d start when Jack broke his fibula, the regular recurrences of ankle injuries, the moment when Arsene Wenger told him that he would not be getting a new contract at Arsenal or possibly you\u2019d even begin now as Jack retires from the game to open a new chapter as a coach at his beloved Arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of&nbsp; those moments&nbsp;are viable options for a starting point&nbsp;and in that selection &#8212; and there could be many more&nbsp;moments I could have chosen &#8212; it is easy&nbsp;to see that the overriding theme of any appraisal of Jack Wilshere as at July 2022 is &#8220;what might have been&#8221;. Of course that\u2019s not entirely fair. Jack has 34 England caps, 2 FA Cup winners medals, he made 125 appearances for Arsenal and also represented, at different times, West Ham, Bournemouth and Bolton before retiring in the employ of Dutch club AGF. At his bewitching best he was one of the most exciting and skillful players we have seen in English football in the last twenty-five years. Comparisons with Gazza are not exaggerated or fanciful, as he was a stellar talent and though his career was peppered with indiscretions most were relatively minor and not the sort of extraordinary behavioural own goals that littered Gazza\u2019s career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is also, especially for a lot of Arsenal fans, an elephant in the room. Might it be that had he been handled differently, been taken better care of and protected from himself and the destructive tackling of Premier League opponents might he still be playing for Arsenal today, our midfield colossus and the elder statesman still in his prime? When I asked for views on this from a number of Arsenal fans it is very clear that many believe that several of his injuries were avoidable and that had he not been driven into the \u2018infamous red zone\u2019 his career may well have had a totally different trajectory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To examine this aspect of Jack\u2019s story I\u2019ve called on Trev\u2019s deep physiological and orthopaedic knowledge, and I will share his thinking shortly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I want to begin this look at Jack\u2019s career with a personal memory. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s just me or not, but when I see a great player or a great team performance it is framed in my mind with the date and circumstances of the match. Ian Wright\u2019s record-breaking goal, the debut of Dennis Bergkamp, the first appearance of Patrick Vieira and indeed the first appearance of Liam Brady are filed away in what my wife believes is a storehouse of useless information, most of it relating to Arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My first chance to assess Jack in the flesh, so to speak, was a League Cup game in November 2008 against Wigan Athletic. I went to the game with two old chums, one a very old friend who had seen a huge amount of football much of which was at Arsenal, but whose heart belonged to Palace&nbsp; and another, who had stood on the terraces at Highbury with me for several seasons and had experienced with me the extraordinary 1979 FA Cup Final. Arsenal had beaten Sheffield United 6-0 in the previous round but I had been at a board dinner in Exeter and so missed the entry into Arsenal folklore of Jack Wilshere. For some bizarre reason I remember the following day\u2019s Evening Standard suggesting that Jack was a throwback to a simpler and more old-fashioned football era and that his name was reminiscent of a pilot character in Biggles!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was with keen anticipation I watched Jack\u2019s appearance against Wigan in a fledgling team that featured Aaron Ramsey in midfield, Carlos Vela wide and most exciting of all a young Danish striker, Niklas Bendtner, in the main striking role. It was predicted that he had the ability to become the greatest striker who ever lived. Sadly, he was the only one making this prediction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My Palace mate started purring within seconds of the start as Jack\u2019s silky touch became apparent and he glided across the turf evading challenges at will. Just before halftime he produced an extraordinary long pass to Jay Simpson which left him in the clear to open the scoring. Even at that early stage all of the Wilshere attributes were on show. Most exciting for me was that burst of acceleration which took him past opponents just as they expected to nick the ball away from him. His first touch often took him immediately into situations where he threatened danger. What happens with young players is that we fail to appreciate them for themselves but immediately find a comparison so that we can convey to others what sort of player they are or who they remind us of. For me the obvious comparison was Liam Brady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you know how highly I rated Liam as a player, you will appreciate what a compliment that was. Both were predominantly left-footed but good enough and quick enough that one-footedness was a blessing not a liability. And when they needed to use their right foot they were able to do do to sublime effect. Remember Brady\u2019s cross to Stapleton for our second goal in the 1979 Cup Final? Wilshere had a similar moment in 2014 against Manchester City where he glided onto a ball in the inside right channel. Wrong side we all thought but he struck the ball past Joe Hart with real class into the top corner. Also like Liam there was the feistiness that had to be there when you are a small ball-playing midfielder operating in the jungle of the Premier League. There were flashes of temper and indiscretions &#8212; Brady sent off against Hadjuk Split at Highbury after intense goading from the Yugoslavs, Jack saw red against Birmingham at the Grove for a piece of petulance. But that is a part of a ball-player\u2019s make-up that has to be there if you hope to compete and to win respect from opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jack was immediately f\u00eated as a superstar. I wasn\u2019t the only Gooner who saw in him the second coming of Brady. This was a burden for him but it was exciting for the fans &#8212; a Hitchin-born superstar that had been an Academy sensation and been playing out of his age groups right from the early stages of his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the claims about him was his ordinariness, how he\u2019d had a sensible upbringing and strong family roots. He needed these as the tabloids started to hone in on his private life, and as I am sure he will admit he was probably naive to allow himself to be photographed with hookah pipes or in what looked like boozefests in glamorous resorts with his close mates and other players. He was in a fracas which saw him arrested but to the disappointment of the tabloids it emerged that he was acting as a peacemaker rather than an aggressor and he just received a caution. But he was fair game for the tabloids, especially in the light of his fame, growing notoriety and with so many people keen to take the definitive picture showing him behaving inappropriately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were two concurrent themes as Jack\u2019s career developed. The media are always looking for that generational player who is good enough to turn the footballing world upside down. Could Jack Wilshere ascend to that throne, when players like Currie and Keegan and Barnes and Gascoigne and Gerrard and Rooney had all failed at the highest level to imprint themselves on world football consciousness? Many of those players were profoundly talented but did any of them, with the possible exception of Keegan, achieve world superstar status? With his burgeoning ability which saw him not only capped for England but also&nbsp;identified as the heartbeat of the side there was a time when Wilshere looked to be that special generational player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other issue, inevitably, was his injury challenges. That is why his occasionally erratic behaviour off the field was a particular concern. Could he look after himself better? He clearly had an inbuilt fragility and many felt&nbsp;this might be being exacerbated by an inappropriate lifestyle. Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, who Jack credits as a great mentor, was so keen to ensure that his charges looked after themselves properly that it is hard to believe he did not receive sound advice and guidance. But youth is often wasted on the young, and from time to time the headlines made grim reading &#8212; albeit that Jack was a target. Fatherhood came early to him;  it was clearly a huge motivation for him, and helped him to moderate his lifestyle. Despite the witch hunt against him his excesses were never that serious. In fact Arsenal fans came to love him even more after successive Cup Final celebrations led to him leading an impromptu and expletive laden rendering of an anti-Tottenham song! Yobbish behaviour it may have seemed but in the increasingly&nbsp;tribal world of North London club football the red half saw him as a hero and the white half as a pariah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To flesh out those two issues he made his England debut in 2010 (aged 18) and played a major part in qualification for the Euros in 2016. That Slovenia game where he scored two sublime goals after entering the game as a substitute was his high water mark in international football. Injuries decimated his career and began to take an increasing toll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His injury problems began with a stress fracture of his ankle&nbsp;in 2011 which proved very problematic and he missed the whole season and was out for 17 months. He then got an injury which terminated his 2012\/13 season early. This is where Trev\u2019s insights as an experienced physiotherapist are so helpful and I am most grateful to him for these comments some of which appeared in the blog many years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;In the human body, the muscular system does a few things, some of which may not be immediately apparent. For example, the muscles store the ingredients required to generate medium term energy \u2013 that is to say, while the sugars needed to fuel a 100m sprint are all in the blood stream, the 1500m runner will derive their energy from the muscle stores, and the marathon runner will eventually burn up fat reserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The muscles also create a pumping system which cleans the body of the waste, such as acid and oxidant, created by generating energy. Most obviously, the muscles generate the forces which move the body around, and slightly less obviously, the forces which prevent it from moving too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;To explain that last point \u2013 whenever an injury occurs in the body, be it bone or joint damage, trauma, bruising, strain or inflammation, the muscles around the injury site go into a protective contraction \u2013 \u2018if it can\u2019t move, it can\u2019t incur any further damage\u2019 is the theory. This protective contraction reflex, or spasm, also kicks in whenever a joint is stressed to more than 70% of it\u2019s flexibility or strength limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;That contraction may resolve itself as the injury state improves \u2013 sometimes it does not. There are ways of \u201ckidding\u201d the body\u2019s nervous system into releasing the protective contraction, and it is important that this is ensured as the body returns to health, otherwise continued contraction and compensation for injuries can result in postural changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The body will try to accommodate imbalances as far as possible which, over time, can lead to changes in many parts of the body. Eventually, something has to give but detecting and correcting all the affected parts can be a difficult and lengthy process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;None of that is peculiar to Arsenal Football Club, but the more injuries a player suffers the more complex the problem becomes. And it is our young players that seem to be more injured than most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I believe that is because Arsenal players tend to have been&nbsp;promoted to first team level at a younger age than at most other clubs. Connective tissue \u2013 the tendons and ligaments that give stability to joints \u2013 does not mature and harden in young males until the age of around 21.&nbsp; Arsenal\u2019s style has been based on ball retention, committing and unbalancing opponents, thus inviting challenges and moving at high speed. All this results in higher risk of catching, tearing and twisting injuries, sometimes, in Arsenal\u2019s case, to 16-20 year olds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Once that connective tissue is damaged as a teenager, it is very hard to get a perfect repair. Any resulting instability, damage or trauma&nbsp;in a joint will result in the soft tissues reflexively contracting to immobilise and protect the joint. Contracting&nbsp; muscles, operating at a shortened length, are more likely to suffer further tears or strains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The Arsene Wenger model of recent years has tended to be to use leaner players for their quickness and agility, and we have had a lot of smaller, shorter players who rely on technique and passing rather than the more mature power runners of his earlier years at Arsenal, when we didn\u2019t seem to suffer these injury pile-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;At the time when Jack was playing, most of us in Dave&#8217;s old bar said we needed more height and power in our central midfield. The obvious advantage was to be more able to clear the ball from set pieces, win headers generally, and be able to stand up better to the likes of a Yaya Toure, Matic, Schweinsteiger etc etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Jack&#8217;s style of dribbling and ball carrying invited anyway a lot of challenges &#8211; not to mention rotational fouling &#8211; and coincided with a number of managers like Allardyce, Pulis, Hughes and Ferguson who were only too keen to tell their players to &#8220;get in the faces&#8221; of Arsenal&#8217;s ball players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The taller player, though, has another advantage in that box to box role, namely, a longer stride.  Even at the elite level of sprinting, Usain Bolt covers 100 metres in 41 strides, while his competitors take an average 44.  That means 3 extra stresses and loading of the ankle, knee, hip and spinal joints for every 100 metres run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;How many more times will Jack Wilshere\u2019s weight, with his shorter strides, hit the joints in his body over the course of a game than, say, Matic\u2019s? And in case you think it\u2019s trivial, bear this in mind:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;At a brisk walking pace, each step will induce a force of around 2.5x body weight through the knees.&nbsp; While running, the force increases to around 5x body weight, while jumping off your bottom stair at home onto the floor will induce a force of around 10x body weight into the knees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Its easy to understand how young, smaller players are going to cause more wear in their joints than their taller counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Over the period when Jack and his smaller team mates, like Walcott, Cazorla, Oxlade-Chamberlain were playing for us, his taller, heavier counterparts at Chelsea lost ONE QUARTER of the player days through injury that we did.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These injury problems sadly came to define Jack. His injury struggles at Arsenal became almost continuous. When a player is increasingly absent and continually breaks down you see the harsh reality of football fandom. Supporters retain affection but lose faith and that is what happened to Wilshere. He started to disappear from the consciousness of Arsenal fans and when he wasn\u2019t given a new contract the majority of fans reluctantly accepted the decision. His subsequent time with West Ham and Bournemouth wasn\u2019t successful enough to support the contention that if only he could get fit there was still a special talent ready to be unleashed. Sadly Jack couldn\u2019t get fit enough to prove that and his displays were never eye catching enough to suggest he could ever return to his former level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of football stories end in sadness or failure but there is real hope that Jack Wilshere\u2019s won\u2019t. Arsenal seek a good infusion of DNA into their reserve and youth teams and Jack has been given a marvellous opportunity as head of the Under-18 team to stay with the club he&nbsp;loves and to improve the next generation of Arsenal players. Great players rarely make great coaches, but they sometimes do. Arsenal fans everywhere will be fervently hoping that this is a story with a happy ending and that Jack\u2019s legacy is strong despite the fact that it hasn\u2019t been passed on in exactly the way we envisaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just as Wilshere evoked memories of Brady with that surge and superb left foot, maybe we will see another great Wilshere-like talent emerge to become the player that sadly injuries did not permit Jack to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Let\u2019s begin with a bit of fantasising. You, reader, have been commissioned to write the biography of Jack Wilshere. How would you begin? Would you follow chronology &#8212; the young lad born in Hitchin, an obvious football prodigy, and chart his career through time from there? Would you begin at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6330"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6362,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6330\/revisions\/6362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}