A developmental manager is a bit like a record label with a stable of up-and-coming acts.
He always needs a hit. When he has a hit, it makes all his other acts look bettter. When he doesn’t have a hit, it places doubts over all his acts.
In the last five years, Arsene Wenger has been like a label boss who needs a hit. In 2004-2005, Fabregas and Senderos were hits. In 2007-2008, Adebayor was a hit because he scored 18 league goals and six against Derby County. Years ago, Anelka was a hit in 1998 and 1999.
After three years without a trophy, Arsene can’t keep talking about potential, potential, potential. One of his youngsters has to start delivering, has to lift the team, has to justify the faith placed in him, has to vindicate the manager’s strategy.
Theo Walcott scored a hat-trick for England in Croatia and has looked very good ever since. Carlos Vela looked hot to me when he made that cameo against Newcastle 25 days ago. That was when I noted :
Carlos Vela came on and fitted smoothly into Arsenal’s ensemble play. You might say : So he should fit in! He trains with these guys every day. Even allowing for the fact that the contest was over, Vela had to make decisions, and he did that very well. Every run, every turn, every pass, every flick, had a purpose -Vela looked the business. He looked pure class. He looked like a Latin Bostik-boots who could became Arsenal’s biggest star. This Mexican might shift merchandise. He might sell a lot of shirts.
In the Carling Cup, Vela, making the game look easy, gave Bendtner the pass for the first goal against Sheffield United. And while Bendtner scored his first brace, Vela scored his first hat-trick. His scalpel-sharp finishing allowed 56,000 to see a 6-0 win by an Arsenal team packed with top quality teenagers.
Vela’s finishing demonstrated surgical skill and uncanny composure. And you can’t teach that. You can train players, you can rehearse the moves, you can encourage them, you can wind them up, but you can’t make them into natural finishers. That’s in their genes. They’ve either got that or they haven’t. And Vela has it. Right from the first time you saw him play, he didn’t look like a guy who would miss four sitters. He looked more like a guy who would score four goals.
Arsene said, “I’m very happy and very proud tonight. I was not surprised because I see them every day, but you never know on a big stage how they play. We knew about Bendtner, but we discovered more about Vela.”
By the way, don’t talk too often or too glibly about hat-tricks. The more you talk about “a Vela hat-trick” the more familiar it is, the more everyday it becomes, the more the achievement is, in fact, downgraded. To score a hat-trick is fabulous for any player, not just a nineteen year-old. It’s difficult for anybody to score three goals in one game in professional football. So please remember that when Vela scores his next hat-trick. It’s not an everyday thing and it can’t be done by everyday players. It can only be done by special talents.
It’s still September and it’s enough to know that Carlos Vela and Theo Walcott are special talents. We don’t know the future but we hope they can write the future.