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Jack Wilshere’s Big Day Off: Previewing Arsenal vs. Bournemouth

In our final Premier League Preview of the week, we wonder what Jack Wilshere will get up to while his loan outfit and home club duke it out at the Emirates.
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When Bournemouth meet Arsenal at the Emirates this weekend, special provision will have to be made for Jack Wilshere. Barred from playing against his parent club by the arbitrary rules of the Premier League loan system, we're assuming that someone will be left to look after him, just so he doesn't go out on some sort of Richmond Superking bender and end up hiding from the paps in an alleyway, behind the industrial bins. Jack Wilshere is basically the multi-millionaire version of that lad at school who once tagged along with some ne'er-do-wells to the TK Maxx in Milton Keynes, only to take the hit for someone else switching the tags on some stonewash jeans, which he didn't even realise was shoplifting. He's beautifully guileless, easily influenced, and seems to come away from most human encounters with a mild reprimand and the footballing equivalent of a serious grounding and a three-year local megastore ban.

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Whoever is left to curb Wilshere's inadvertent naughty streak will have to plan ahead, and think of an effective way to entertain what is essentially a slightly wayward teenager born in 1992. Options might include getting the original Scream on VHS from an independent video rental store, setting off some dodgy, foreign-made fire crackers round the local garage or taking him to get his ear pierced in Claire's Accessories, because the woman who does it there is, like, proper fit. That should take up the majority of Sunday afternoon, by which time Eddie Howe and co. will be on the coach home, most likely on the back of a plucky but ultimately routine defeat. Wilshere's day will have been a success if he is kept away from a) ciggies b) Archers Peach Schnapps and c) the lads who hang around the Morrisons car park, because everyone knows if he runs into them again there's going to be a proper scrap.

In fairness to Jack, his first few months at Bournemouth have been relatively free of incident, certainly in comparison to his last year at Arsenal in which tabloid escapades seemed almost as common as deeply frustrating injury setbacks. It's not hard to imagine Arsene Wenger picking up the morning paper last season, then sighing resignedly at the latest snaps of Wilshere huffing on a B&H Silver, or being dragged into an altercation outside a shite nightclub near Leicester Square. Wenger is a parental mentor, an ageing father-figure who doesn't get angry, so much as disappointed, at news of his players' mild misbehaviour. Perhaps Eddie Howe will be more authoritative, in that he is basically the cool uni graduate to Wilshere's weak-willed teen and, as such, can use the infamous 'peer pressure' to influence his young companion and make him behave.

That said, with Howe out of town, it would only take a lapse of concentration for Wilshere to escape into the wild this weekend. With his minder briefly distracted, he could make a run for it, break his bounds and soar free in the great outdoors. He could tear through the sleepy streets of Bournemouth, a whirlwind of fag ash, Lynx Africa and tearaway adolescent rebellion. He'd probably just end up hiding behind the bins again, unfortunately. Maybe it's best he just stays home and watches the game.