Jack Wilshere

His stock isn’t what is used to be but he was always insanely overrated, touted as the savior of England and future captain of Arsenal.

Time for him to show what type of player he really is this year. He’ll never get a better chance to show that he can stay fit and force his way into our lackluster midfield. If he can’t do that, well fuck him he’s out of contract soon anyway.

Bye Howe’s own admition it was bevause Jack felt his ankle twinge and didn’t want to risk anything.

Howe maintained he wanted Jack permanently right through the season.

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No one stops reading @sol 's posts after one sentence.

No one.

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@arsenescoatmaker I don’t pretend to have watched a lot of Wilshere last season though if he was regarded as Bournemouth’s greatest player by some, it certainly wasn’t a common enough opinion to hear it repeated / echoed anywhere else, and that is not the impression I got from reading various Bournemouth match reports over the course of the season.

You’d have thought he’d have got back into the England team at least if he was by far and away their best player? Or have attracted the attention of other clubs in the summer if he was that impressive? Surely a Premier League scout of some description would have seen he was above Bournemouth’s level (certainly if he was seen by some Bournemouth fans as their best ever player) and made a bid?

Irrespective of the above, his injury record speaks for itself and he’s not somebody we should keep on, as sad as that is to admit.

We’ve seen that a lot of PL teams want our cast offs but they make far too much money on wages. I wouldn’t base my whole idea of Jack being bad on the notion that nobody in the PL wanted him. He had offers to move abroad but he didn’t want to.

I didn’t think that anyone decent (I know you didnt stipulate the quality of these teams) from abroad wanted him either? I remember a link to Sampdoria, were there others?

Well with Jack there’s a lot more to it than just his quality the real question is if the guy can stay fit the entire season. Abroad I heard rumors of Fenherbace, Real Betis, and Sampdoria.

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Are news outlets notified of every single enquiry and/or bid?

He played well in a playmaker role whenever I saw him. A few clubs were interested in him. The problem for most clubs is there’s too many question marks over his ability to stay fit.

His market value is probably 120k-200k per appearance, so I expect his next contract to be very much appearance related earnings.

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To be fair, I expect there is also an element of him wanting to get a bigger payday if he leaves on a free, so he might have rejected a few offers himself this summer.

But regardless, we shouldn’t be extending him imo. For argument’s sake, if we can hypothetically find somebody with 75% of Wilshere’s ability but who makes 45+ appearances in the season, that hypothetical player will have contributed far more to us than Jack. A reliance on Wilshere to be a squad/first team player is risky, because if he does get injured then you start having to rely on youngsters who haven’t broken into the team yet, or playing people woefully out of position.

The fact that Jack takes up a squad spot and a salary of c. £4m - £7m per year is the reason I think we shouldn’t keep him. That squad spot and salary could be more economically/efficiently spent elsewhere i.e. on a player who is going to play double or triple the minutes that Jack will.

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The thing is we’re unlikely to get anyone as talented as Wilshere or Santi who change our game when they play. I’d happily pay both 150k upwards per appearance. It incentivices them staying fit and we spend less money if they can’t.

If Wilshere could give us 20 games and Santi another 20 games that would seriously improve our season imo and my personal entertainment into the bargain.

You can incentivise Wilshere to stay fit but you can’t exactly disincentivise the next central midfielder he comes across who sooner or later is going to crunch his suspect left / right ankles.

I genuinely struggle to believe with Jack Wilshere’s injury ‘portfolio’ how some people seem to think the same thing is somehow not going to happen again, presuming he goes back to playing central midfield. Baffling.

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This is true that he’ll be injury prone but from 12/13-13/14 he managed about 50 appearances and I’d take that for 17/18-18/19

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The last time Jack played a full season was around 7 years ago.

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Did he start more game that season than he did for Bournemouth last season?

For what it’s worth, Bournemouth fans on reddit that watched all of their games were huge on Wilshere staying. They thought he was great in that deeper role that he played and often found that he was always a step ahead of his teammates. Many of them thought he was their best player by some margin and were impressed with his performances given his new role.

I was happy with what I heard/saw of him last season, and he’s looked good so far as well. Just gotta take it easy with bringing him back into the game.

The old ‘I didn’t watch a second of it but have a strong opinion anyway’ routine. It happens to us all, but always fun watching it get exposed.

Everyone (or most people) want Wilshere to be that player for us and maybe he has a route back in if Xhaka doesn’t up his game, but the evidence isn’t exactly strong in his favour. I can’t believe the answer to Wilshere’s continuous run last season is as simple as being away from Arsenal and Arsenal’s training regime.

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He played 49 games in 10/11. 35 of those in the league.

The following season zero appearences.

Hasn’t had an injury free season since.

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How many of he games he missed last season were due to his typical injury problems? Was it not like a fracture or something that kept him out towards the end of last season?