“I don’t think he’ll ever be a goal scorer,” remarked Arsene Wenger about Jack Wilshere after Arsenal’s 1-1 draw away at West Brom. The comment followed a week in which Wilshere had caused controversy for being pictured having a sneaky fag outside a nightclub.

Now, I am firm believer that footballers should not smoke, they are paid obscene amounts of money and are paid that money to be at the top of their game which smoking obviously hampers.

However, Wilshere is still only 21 and every young person makes mistakes every now and again. I bet there is only a small majority of us that could say they didn’t try a quick cigarette behind the bike shed at some point in our early years. It was literally a case of a tiny bit of smoke turning into a roaring bonfire and it has been dealt with. The club, the player and the fans have moved on.

The reaction

What is far more important as a footballer is how you react to situations like that and the circumstances surrounding his smoking, that occurred over a month ago, has shown the absolute ‘mental strength’ (an Arsene classic) that Wilshere possess.

In the game we all love and more generally in all sport these days mental strength is extremely important.  Often, there are very fine margins between 3 points or 0 points and the mental strength and character of a person or team can swing those margins in their direction favourably.

It is even more important in the modern game, if you look at examples like tennis or athletics, an athlete will have a full time sport psychiatrist to help give them the edge and improve their game that fraction more.

In the case of Jack he showed the exact reaction any manager would look for in a player. The press have always been quick to snap at him, they built him up so much and the press being the press cannot resist bringing him back down again. It is how the press works, how they sell newspapers and part and parcel of the modern game.

However, Jack didn’t take any notice of the press complaining about his form, his smoking, his so called ‘racist’ views and the most ridiculous of it all, his pissing. He is a confident boy and I also see him as quite a stubborn boy (an attribute that is generally quite positive for a footballer – see Roy Keane).

He put his head down and scored against West Brom to silence his critics. It is the sign of any good footballer; they don’t do much talking about a negative situation they show who they really are on the pitch.

The character

Let us not forget that it was an important point that he secured for us at The Hawthorns. If we had of lost the old critics would have come back saying we are not title contenders, we don’t have the physical presence or the leaders…blah, blah, blah.

It was a point that kept us on our unbeaten league run, kept the confidence in the team and considering West Brom had just beaten United, stuck a middle finger to them. And it was a point that was secured by Wilshere, the most “overrated English player of his generation” as dubbed by some.

Barring Wilshere’s injury, that was the lowest point of his career and to make things even worse for him Ramsey had come into a fine run of form. The critics were praising Ramsey left, right and centre and at the same time Wilshere was on the receiving end of some quite heavy criticism.

But what did he do? He stuck his head down, got on with things, trained harder and scored against West Brom and then a few weeks later he (nearly- I don’t see us losing 3-0 to Napoli) secured our qualification in the Champions League ‘group of death’.

This shows two things about Jack, he is a fighter and he has the mental strength that any top, top footballer requires and that Arsene puts so much importance on. However, as Arsene mentioned in his post-match press conference after Marseille;

"He is starting to think, 'What (Aaron) Ramsey can do, I can do as well', the first goal shows that.”

The fact Ramsey had been experiencing one of best periods of his career and Jack one of the worst, had a real big influence on those two delicious goals against Marseille (especially the first).

The competition created

Competition within any sports team is healthy; the fight for places forces players to up their game and become an even better player.  It is exactly what happened to Wilshere. He was dissatisfied with watching Ramsey get all the praise and he decided to show that he had what it takes to be a quality player. The way he bounced back from so much criticism and stuck it to the critics shows he has exactly what it takes to run our midfield for years to come.

It is that mental strength, that desire to show he has the talent and also his desire to knock Ramsey of his pedestal (in a friendly team like way of course) that goes a long way to prove that he will be one of the best players of his generation. He has all the attributes needed to be a ‘world class’ footballer and I use the term ‘world class’ in a Xavi or Iniesta sense. It is a term that is used far too readily these days and should only be used for exceptional circumstances.

What is the world coming to when a player of Soldado’s calibre is considered world class?

Aaron vs Jack

It is also what brings me believe that in the long term he will be a better player than Ramsey. This is not taking anything away from Ramsey, he has been absolutely sensational this year and without a doubt one of our best players but I think Wilshere has the little bit more to his game than Ramsey does.

Of course, Ramsey essentially did what Wilshere has just done at the end of last season/ start of the current one and deserves all the plaudits coming his way. He likewise overcame his critics and came back even stronger and better than we ever in our wildest dreams expected him to do.

However, I feel Wilshere has that technical ability, that vision, that pass, that audacious chip over the keeper, that first touch which would be most peoples second or third that Ramsey doesn’t quite have. Ramsey is a player I have always seen as box to box, he gets stuck in and can score goals and is what some people like to call a typical British midfielder, a Lampard or a Gerrard.

Whereas, Wilshere just has that little bit more class, that excitement and that desire to prove to everybody that he really is the dog’s bollocks. That alone makes me believe he is by far our most exciting prospect and that he will one day be our best player on the pitch and an Arsenal legend up there with the likes of Bergkamp.

Again, I stress that this should take nothing away from Ramsey and I think this competition that has started between the two can be nothing but positive for us in the future. I just feel Wilshere has that little bit more and that one day he will be our legend, a dream of the player himself, a true Arsenal man;

“When I'm retired, if I look back at my career and I am able to call myself an arsenal legend, that'd be a dream come true." Wilshere.

What the future holds

Anything Aaron can do, Jack can do better. Only time will tell, but against Marseille, Jack took the first steps towards proving that. It was not just the pure exquisiteness of his first goal that does that, it was the statement that said ‘I’m here and I’m not going to go away, just watch what I can do and bring it on Aaron, you may have won the first battle but the war has only just begun.’

When quizzed on the fact that Wenger had said he doesn’t see Wilshere as a goal scorer, Wenger brushed the question off with “If I’m wrong, I’m happy.” Well Wenger, you are very rarely wrong, but just this one time I feel you might have been.

Let the games begin.

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