Theo Walcott

Sanchez is more than just a final third player. You would genuinely choose Walcott over Sanchez?

Is he? I would consider him firmly a final third player. Most of the times he drops deep are completely unnecessary in a club with a functional midfied (something I recognise, we rarely had with SĂĄnchez), so I would basically do without his non-final third contributions in ideal circumstances.

Yeah, Walcott 12-14 version I would take over Sánchez, yes, though it’s very close. When he went down against Spurs in the cup I said to my friends ‘there goes our most important player’ (Ramsey was injured at the time, tbf), they laughed at me, but I’d stand by that. Shame he didn’t come back the same player.

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Frankly that’s outrageous. The difference in quality between the two is night and day lol

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Come on, mate. You can’t just take stuff away from certain players, for the benefit of your argument, and give others a peak, which might not be representative for their actual quality, but a lightning in a bottle season for him…

What am I taking away? I’m saying quite simply I’ll take Walcott from the beginning of the 2012-13 season until the point he did his ACL in January 15 over Sánchez.

Of course if you ask me whose career I’d take I’ll take Alexis.

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Really? I never remembered Walcott getting a 30 goal season. You never answer if Walcott started all 38 games in 12/13 if he can match Alexis goals. Walcott played a role in 36 games and only managed 14 goals. He played 9 games in the CL and FA Cup and managed 3 other goal contributions

In 12/13 Theo had 21 goals and 16 assists in all comps.

I didn’t answer it because it’s not really a sensical argument. You’d rather look at games, despite it being shown that Walcott’s appearances that were as a starter were just as impressive as stated, despite being shown that his starts were not as you showed (that is, 21 out of 24 he played 90 or was taken off at the very end, and only 3 was he taken off because he was as you, say, ‘gassed’, which, is in short, a completely normal distribution for any player)…it’s a weird manipulation of the stats that you want to do so that Sánchez comes out better, and even then it’s negligible and depends on your interpretation (24 in 32–24 starts-- and 34 in 38–36 starts).

You’re acting as if it’s Giroud in 16-17 or Dzeko for City or Morata for Madrid, where sub effects really come into discussion, when it’s simply not comparable, Walcott was a starter in 12-13, and so was Sánchez.

And yes, in the magical world where Walcott was as fit as Sánchez and could stay fit as well as Sánchez, I think he would score 30 goals in a season in all competitions, because it simply follows from the rate at which he was scoring. But that’s a magical world and not really an interesting discussion unless you’re trying to skew the discussion in some really weird, selective way.

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Just a friendly reminder, in that 12/13 season Theo Walcott had 21 goals and 16 assists on about 3,000 minutes of play time. That equates to a goal or assist every 80 minutes of play.

For context, KDB this season has 23 assists and 15 goals in all comps in 3600 minutes of play. That equates to a goal or assist once every 95 minutes.

Theo was absolutely world class that season as a 24 year old guy just coming into his prime. The next season before he had his major knee injury he was almost replicating that as well. At a goal contribution every 93 minutes. The man was a fucking beast.

Hugely frustrating player, though. Sometimes looked really uncomfortable on the ball, a bit like Pepe does sometimes now.

Would end up just running into the oncoming defender.

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Yeah, Theo “Sign da ting” Walcott was pretty damn good.

Yeah had a class season in 12/13.

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Fantastic goalscorer before the knee injury. Very underrated performer at times.

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You think enough time has passed that you can do this Walcott vs KdB statistical comparison all over again and :fishing_pole_and_fish: an entirely new batch of posters :grin:

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There is absolutely no way that Pep would have touched a player like Theo.
His lack of a football brain and understanding would not have been compensated enough by pace and the odd individual direct running attack.

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Ah cool. Could you set some sort of alarm and remind us of this more regularly? Thanks.

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While Theo was good back then you’re comparing an 8 to a highest placed forward in our side at the time. It’s an apples and oranges comparison

I suppose Pires might be a closer comparison to The Brown. (Even then it’s not like for like)

By conparison, I mean stats wise when Pires had that outstanding season for goals and assists in 03/04 (or was it 02/03?)

Pires in the PL:

14 goals 8 assists in 03/04
14 goals 3 assists in 02/03
9 goals and 15 assists in 01/02 off 28 games

But Pires didn’t play as high up the field as Walcott. A better example is probably Sterling

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Or even David Silva’s stats could provide a more direct comparison.

Out of interest, @BigWeng_4LYFE quoted KdB’s stats across all competitions- I wonder what Pires’ were like over the same course of time (the 3 seasons) you mentioned.

He scored in the cup final in 03, for example, scored countless goals in the CL in the same.time span