It’s what he’s been striving for all these years.
A collective style, with passing that is so fast that other teams can’t get tackles in because the ball’s long gone by the time they get there. It’s their collective style that’s winning games right now, not brilliant individuals.
His team now has more width than he’s ever had before, faster passing than ever before, and more energy than ever before. He’s always valued pace more than any other quality, and he’s always been good at releasing pace, but he can now attack across the whole width of the pitch by using explosive runs to support the ball in the middle third and the front third.
The key at the Reebok was Nicklas Bendtner. Slick, short, penetrating passes flowed from the Dane. He can feed runners far more naturally than Van Persie, who is too selfish and laborious. On this evidence, Bendtner is the way forward. He CAN play with Adebayor and feed players running into the box. Even if his pass to Eboue was actually intended for Adebayor, who was onside, for once.
In some games it doesn’t matter that Arsenal are not strong spinally, that they don’t have a commanding keeper like Buffon, a big stopper like Vidic, and a ball-winning anchorman like Vieira or Yaya Toure.
This was one of those afternoons where Arsenal had to fight to dominate the game, and where they showed all their old frailties when defending balls into the box, but were able to win by what looked like a comfortable score, even though some periods of play were anything but comfortable.
Arsenal gave Bolton a goal start and then hit the post twice and then played them off the pitch and scored three good goals to go top of the table.
It was the same superfast pass-and-move football that destroyed Blackburn last week. But it was played against a better team.
Eboue was on the left wing and he raced onto a Bendtner pass and fired home at the near post to make it 1-1. Replays showed he was offside. But only by a yard.
A minute later, another slick move released Denilson to provide a killer ball into the six-yard box and Bendtner stabbed in for 2-1.
Theo Walcott was on the bench, with Eboue on the left and Denilson on the right. Maybe Arsene thought Walcott was tired after travelling to Barcelona, Zagreb, Blackburn and Kiev. Or maybe he wanted to protect him from tackles like the one by Kevin Davies that flattened Clichy on the touchline just before the break.
Clichy took a severe knock on the ankle when Kevin Davies won the ball, and when half-time arrived it wasn’t clear whether he would be able to continue. A Nolan volley flashed just past the post in 45.
Djourou replaced Clichy for the second half and Sagna switched to left back and it stayed 2-1 until Walcott came on in 70 and made an electric slalom from inside his own half and found Ade and his low cross was converted by Denilson, who hit his shot back across the keeper for 3-1 in 87. A minute later Jaaskaliinen made a terrific save from Walcott.
Walcott now reminds me of Uli Hoeness in the 1974 European Cup Final replay, a game we watched in our flat in Ossian Road, Stroud Green, before I was a football writer. I was a rock journalist and spent all week going to gigs, listening to albums that were delivered every day, fielding calls from record company publicists called Sue, Elly, Sue, Anni, Sue, Dee, Sue, Sue and Sue, and clacking away on one of those machines we used before we typed on a computer screen. On Saturdays my Scottish flatmate John Mair and I used to go to White Hart Lane, Highbury and West Ham together, and we talked about football all the time.
As the blond Uli Hoeness zoomed down the field at an electrifying speed, he seemed to be plugged into an energy-source that was unavailable to mere mortals. Hoeness was like a meteorite and Atletico Madrid were overwhelmed.
Long before the score reached 4-0, John said, “If this is football, what have we been watching?”
Theo Walcott has been like that for the last two weeks.
Let’s hope he has a big career like Uli Hoeness.