It was the sense of anticlimax which was so dispiriting. The buildup had been brightened by all that encouraging talk of a “new Theo Walcott”, the assessments delivered by club manager and player himself and backed up most persuasively by resurgent form at Arsenal. Those eye-catching goals against Chelsea and Basel were plundered by a forward who had acknowledged recent failings and was determined to prove he had changed. Rivals lining up across the back for Malta and Slovenia would surely be quaking in their boots.
And then reality clicked in and reminders of familiar failings came flooding back. Walcott managed 68 minutes against the massed ranks of Maltese defence on Saturday, and a little over an hour again on a shoddy surface at the Stadion Stozice on Tuesday night, and it is hard to recall a positive from either outing. There was one dangerous cross which arced through the penalty area in Ljubljana, and a rising shot which flew over the bar during the first half, but that was the sum of an evening’s work. His replacement, Andros Townsend, had forced a save from Jan Oblak and offered far more of a direct threat down the touchline even in the time it took Walcott to settle into his seat on the bench. That summed it up.
Related: England’s Jordan Henderson and Eric Dier show frustrating lack of ambition | Michael Cox
Continue reading...