Wenger bullish over Ox future
Arsenal’s £12m summer signing from Southampton has wasted no time justifying Arsene Wenger’s faith in him by scoring in his last two club appearances.
Now Wenger, who advised former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson to take Theo Walcott to the World Cup in 2006 as a 17-year-old, believes Oxlade-Chamberlain could be a surprise package for England when they head to Poland and Ukraine.
Wenger said: “I don’t rule him out. It depends on his progress here. You cannot rule him out because he has the basic talent. In the next five, six months we will see how he adjusts to the physical intensity of the game.”
Wenger admits Oxlade-Chamberlain has surprised him with the speed with which he has settled in at the Emirates stadium. Asked if he had exceeded his expectations, Wenger said: “Yes, I did not expect him to be so comfortable as quickly as that so he has done well. He still needs some more time to adapt to the intensity of some of the games. He has the quality already for top-level Premier League games.
“I believe Chamberlain is more in the build-up of a game and Walcott is more striker-minded. They are different types of players, both gifted.
Slowly England gets players out of the youth system that have the quality to play on the international level, at a very interesting level.”
Wenger’s immediate thoughts, however, were on taking three points against Sunderland at the Emirates stadium tomorrow. The Arsenal boss is expected to ask Carl Jenkinson to play at right-back in the absence of Bacary Sagna, who will be sidelined for three months with a broken leg. And Wenger, whose team lost to Tottenham in their last league match and now lie 12 points adrift of leaders Manchester United, is confident his players can climb the table quickly.
He said: “I am convinced we have good potential, we have rebuilt the team and of course we were a bit disturbed at the start of the season for different reasons. But we just want to focus on the short term at the moment, we are not in a position to make long-term plans.
“You can never say that the confidence is at the top when you lose a big game, but we still believe in the way we play and want to behave. We had a good series of results just before we lost to Tottenham and from that game I think there were many positives. We have to respond quickly now because there is a big gap between us and the top teams and we want to reduce that as quickly as possible. I believe that this team will surprise many once we get on a series of results because the behaviour is fantastic.”
His opposite number, Steve Bruce, has branded criticism of Wenger “ridiculous” as he attempts to pile more pressure on the under-fire Arsenal boss. “Listen, we are all open to criticism because of the job we are doing, but Arsene Wenger and what he has achieved, to criticise him is, for me, ridiculous. He has had a poor start for the first time in 20 years, is it? Certainly, he has qualified for UEFA (Cup) or the Champions League in the last 14 or 15 and produced great teams.
“As I have said many times when we have played Arsenal, I think he has been to the detriment of the young British manager because clubs have looked at the job Arsene Wenger has done. Let’s be fair, it was one of those when he walked in, (people said) ‘Arsene who?’. But certainly, most clubs have then thought, ‘Let’s go and get the new Arsene Wenger’, and there are not many of those around. He’s a terrific manager.
“It gives us all hope, I have to say, if we have got the audacity to question Arsene Wenger. What he has achieved there, it’s quite remarkable.”
He said: “He built one of the great teams we have seen here; (Dennis) Bergkamp and (Patrick) Vieira and (Emmanuel) Petit and Overmars and all of that lot were a great, great team.
“That changed the mentality of the Premier League. They were big, strong, powerful.
“I remember my first game with Birmingham playing against them and thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God, look at this lot, they are all 6ft 2in, 6ft 3in‘, and we had a team of midgets.”
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