nah. even though time to time he had his moment last season, most of his performances were not up to the standards.
At his age, each year can be a quantum leap in performance. Only way to know if to get him out there. Get him out there now and, if it looks like he needs additional time, better to know by August 31st.
This is going to happen anyway. I expect a pretty big year from Gervinho now that he'll have players with him who like to make late runs on cut-backs.
When it was early days and Gervinho was confident he was doing well, but was lacking that final ball (terribly). As the year went on he lost confidence and the rigors of a season in England took over, not to mention the ACN. "We" seem to be down on Gervinho right now, but I believe he'll come around this year. The first season is always the hardest.
I'm still holding out hope that Theo might still make that next leap in performance/consistency. He is still a young player, so its a possibility. Barring those improvements, though, I think before long we'll see both AOC & Ryo catching (and passing) him on the depth charts.
I was a little disappointed when Gervinho wasnt one of the pelanty takers against Southampton. Would have been a nice 'no pressure' way to build his goal side confidence
gervinho is a good player but frustrating, i wasn';t hating, just want him out right where he is more comfortable
None of the players we have last season are ready to replace Walcott. Chamberlain is 19 years old and looked out of depth frequently last season, he's probably 1-2 seasons away from being a good starter. Miyachi is young too and it's fair to say that his loan last season to Bolton wasn't a success, and many Bolton fans grew to be extremely frustrated by him. Gervinho has proven himself to be a better dribbler than Walcott but also to have less football intelligence than Walcott, he's not going to be the guy to carry the team and make the team tick. People hate on Walcott but fact is he's one of the few players we have left that are able to make things happen. Even when he plays like utter crap because of our opponent not giving him space, he's making space for our other players to shine.
Only if Wenger is ready to spend more, there are better options out there. But, I don't see that happening any time soon in this overly inflated world of football.
Liverpool have been linked with Walcott, have you guys heard anything about this? Why isn't he signing a new deal at Arsenal? Or have Arsenal not offered him one?
He hasn't signed a new deal because he wants to earn more than what the club (or anyone with half a brain) are willing to give him. The Liverpool rumors are around because he hasn't signed a new contract and grew up as (and still is) a Liverpool supporter. As far as I know there's nothing substantial to them, but people love to connect dots even if they're cutting halfway across the page.
I can't see Liverpool paying him the wages if Arsenal won't. What would he want 80k? In the past we'd have paid that, as we did for Joe Cole, but I think our new management and owners don't want to make those mistakes again. As we saw this summer refusing to meet the demands for Sigurdson.
Personally I'd take Walcott over Dempsey any day. Even though he seems like a limited player, he can be the difference between two sides - like the euro match against Sweden.
Rumors are that we offered 80K and Walcott wants 100K. It could be that the new management will buy Walcott for the same reason that the old one brought Joe Cole, to appease the fans and give them hope. At least Walcott isn't a washed up 28 year old on the back of a poor season that Joe Cole was when he signed, so he can't be anywhere near as bad a signing as Joe Cole.