When Ryan Giggs was three months shy of his 24th birthday he had featured prominently in the first Manchester United team to win a league title for 26 years, and added a further three championship’s, two F.A. Cup’s and a League Cup to his growing collection of medals. Individually he had been voted the PFA Young Player of the Year in both 1991 and 1992.
As such a decorated star, and one of the most feted players in world football, Giggs’ signature would have been coveted by every one of the game’s pre-eminent clubs. Regardless of his exalted status, there is little chance the thought ever entered the Welshman’s mind to enter any contract talks with his manager, the pre-Knighted Alex Ferguson, full of bluster and demanding he be deployed in his preferred position in the team. Indeed, the story is often recalled of a naïve young Giggs plucking the courage to tentatively ask his boss if he may be entitled to a club car, only to be sent from Ferguson’s office with his ears ringing having been forcefully informed that he’d be lucky to receive a club bike.
In the mid-1990’s, and for a large part of his career, Giggs was a flying left-winger. From this berth his performances were at a level which drew comparison with the legendary George Best. We don’t know if a role as a wide-attacker was the player’s favoured choice. It wasn’t relevant. Giggs simply relished every minute he was privileged to wear the fabled Manchester United shirt – an attitude that has admirably been prevalent through to the current day, when as a 39 year-old he sets the standards to which any aspiring young player should strive.
It is an example that Theo Walcott would be strongly advised to follow. At the same age at which Giggs had amassed the aforementioned club and individual honours, a look in Walcott’s trophy cabinet would reveal – in amongst the dust and empty spaces – runner’s-up medals from an F.A. Youth Cup, two League Cup’s and a UEFA Under-21 Championship’s.
Despite a relatively inauspicious early career, most notable for an alarming lack of improvement under the tutelage of Arsene Wenger and when surrounded each day by some wonderfully gifted footballers, Walcott is said to be demanding that he is selected as the central striker in Arsenal’s first team. A degree of self-belief and a healthy ego are pre-requisites for any player to impact at the top-level of the game, but in his stipulations Walcott betrays an over-inflated sense of self importance.
It is easily forgotten amid the recent turmoil at the Emirates Stadium – which reached its most frenzied in the wake of last week’s Capital One Cup elimination at League Two Bradford City – that the Gunners actually enjoyed an encouraging start to this season. Prominent in that was a run of four games which brought victories at Liverpool and Montpellier, a 6-1 home annihilation of Southampton, and a well-deserved draw at Manchester City. Walcott started none of those matches.
None of this is to demonise a 23 year-old who clearly has his ambitions set high. As a player, however, Walcott has much to prove. His pace is an undoubted asset and when used effectively can trouble the finest of defenders, a fact to which Barcelona will testify. In a 2010 Champions League quarter-final, Walcott’s 66th minute introduction imbued Arsenal with the zest and purpose that had previously been lacking in an entirely one-sided match. From being 2-0 behind, the Gunners travelled for a second-leg in Catalonia on level terms.
12 months on, Arsenal faced the same opponents at the second round stage of Europe’s premier competition. On that occasion, the replacement of an ineffective Walcott preceded his team overturning a one goal deficit to win 2-1. In that example is a microcosm of the player’s frustrating absence of advancement.
Allied to his speed across the ground, Walcott has sporadically displayed an ability for clinical finishing when through on goal – most memorably when striking a hat-trick for his country in a 4-1 World Cup qualifying victory in Croatia. Four years later and that type of form has yet to be replicated in a national shirt.
Notwithstanding his current limitations, Walcott is asking Arsene Wenger, who despite recent travails remains one of the esteemed managers in the global game, to guarantee him first dibs on the one striking slot that is available in the formation utilised by the Frenchman. Not satisfied with that request, the former Southampton player is said to be disgruntled with a proposed weekly wage of £75,000, and is seeking terms which would exceed those agreed this week by superior English talent such as Jack Wilshere and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.