It leaves Walcott faced either with a virtually unwinnable task of usurping Alexis Sanchez in front of the more defensively-minded Nacho Monreal on the left or replacing Olivier Giroud through the centre.
He will certainly be preferred in some situations to Giroud but even his biggest admirers will recognise that there are matches when the France striker’s superior back-to-goal style is crucial. It all leaves Walcott in a frustrating situation.
He is losing the chance to generate match sharpness from the start of games and must largely focus on impacting as a substitute.
Yet if Debuchy were still the right-back, or indeed Bacary Sagna or Calum Chambers, Wenger would almost certainly have him in the team. It is a situation that has arisen through no real fault of Walcott’s but it has left him needing to convince Wenger of his defensive capabilities in tandem with Bellerin or that he is a better option up front than Giroud.
Jeremy Wilson
Could Pato be the new Kallstrom?
Arsenal were, quite rightly, roundly laughed at when they signed an injured Kim Kallstrom in January 2014, but Chelsea have somehow escaped the same sort of ridicule over the arrival of striker Alexandre Pato.
Pato watched Chelsea’s 1-1 draw with Manchester United from a Stamford Bridge box because he has joined the club on loan until the end of the season unfit, meaning interim manager Guus Hiddink did not have an out-and-out striker on the substitutes’ bench.
Hiddink has revealed that Pato requires a pre-season training programme to get fit, having not played since November 28, and Chelsea fear it could be as much as six weeks before the Brazilian is ready to start a game.
Radamel Falcao even hopes to be fit before then, so just why did Chelsea bother signing Pato? It is hard to see him making more than a handful of substitute appearances and he will most likely leave the club in the summer. Whoever made the decision to sign the really should offer up some sort of explanation.
Matt Law
Quote of the week
"I thought you had to be clever to live around here."
Ruud van Nistelerooy's response to the Oxford Union this week upon hearing that his old friend Martin Keown lives in the area.
Carrick's return helps United turn things around
Manchester United are a much more positive team with Michael Carrick in it.
Not everything the veteran midfielder does will make the compilation of aesthetic highlights of the season. He is not the natural heir to George Best, Eric Cantona or Ryan Giggs.
But when Carrick plays Louis Van Gaal’s side look much more fluid and forward thinking. The manager operates a safety-first preference for two defensive midfielders whatever the circumstances. Of the quartet of available personnel, Carrick is the only one who operates as a deep-lying quarter back, passing the ball forwards instead of sideways.
With Carrick in the side, the ball is much more likely to arrive at the feet of Juan Mata, Jesse Lingard and Antony Martial in advanced positions, in places where they can do damage.
Against Chelsea he looked to probe with his passes rather than simply contain; his threaded forward roll towards Wayne Rooney was a pivotal part of United’s bright opening twenty minutes. It is no coincidence that United’s recent improvement has coincided with his return to full fitness.
Jim White
Footballing pedantry of the week
Wonderful though Jamie Vardy's goal was against Liverpool, it sparked a brief skirmish among football linguists - was it really a volley? No. Was it a half-volley? Don't get us started.
Danny Drinkwater makes his England case
Of the four Englishmen in Leicester City’s current first choice XI only Jamie Vardy has been capped at senior international level and given how much Roy Hodgson has been watching the league-leaders of late, you wonder if that will change ahead of next month’s friendly against Germany in Berlin.
For Danny Drinkwater, a stalwart of the midfield who has formed a strong partnership with N’Golo Kante, there will scarcely be a better chance. Hodgson has traditionally stuck with his favourites although he is not currently blessed with many suitable players in that position.
Jordan Henderson, Fabian Delph and Jonjo Shelvey have all struggled of late with injury or form. Jack Wilshere is still injured. James Milner is not being played in defensive midfield for Liverpool. Dele Alli and Eric Dier are two exceptions to that.
Drinkwater, 25, has an interesting story. A contemporary of Danny Welbeck at United, he never played a senior game at the club despite making England junior squads. He did the obligatory loan spells at Huddersfield Town, Cardiff, Watford and Barnsley before Leicester signed him in January 2012. He was a regular in the Championship, but less so in the club’s first Premier League season.
Drinkwater left United the month that Paul Scholes came out of retirement and that same season Tom Cleverley and even Paul Pogba were ahead of him in the pecking order when it came to giving first team chances to young players.
It is hard to find a place for every young prospect at United, and Sir Alex Ferguson gave chances to as many as he could but Drinkwater could join a select group including Gerard Pique and Pogba of former United academy boys who left and won league titles elsewhere.
There have even been suggestions that United would like him back. Certainly he would be justified in asking whether many Englishmen at the heart of a league-leading side in February have been overlooked by the England manager for the March friendly squad.
Sam Wallace
Made-up stat of the week
0% John Terry's success rate in reversing referees' decisions in his 782 appearances for club and country
Watford's key men running out of steam
A quiz question: who do you think is Watford’s third-top Premier League scorer this season? Those of you familiar with the format of rhetorical football quizzes may already have guessed the answer. Odion Ighalo has 14 goals; Troy Deeney six; next on the list, with a grand total of two, is old favourite Mr O. Goals. In total, Ighalo and Deeney have either scored or assisted 22 out of Watford’s 27 goals this season.
Which is why Watford fans may find it somewhat disquieting to hear their manager Quique Sanchez Flores admitting that Ighalo and Deeney, as well as Valon Behrami, were too tired to train ahead of the game against Tottenham on Saturday. “I wanted to choose one player from Deeney, Behrami and Ighalo to start,” Flores said. “In the end I chose Ighalo, but I could tell he was tired.”
Small wonder. Deeney and Ighalo have featured in all 25 of Watford’s league games. Deeney has played all but 51 minutes of the campaign; Ighalo all but 118, along with international commitments. They have been running, jumping and shoulder-barging themselves into the ground since August. Watford still have 13 games to play this season, along with a Cup run, and the fear is that with they will be running on empty long before its conclusion.
Flores said he was “not worried”. January signing Nordin Amrabat can play as a striker, and was presumably purchased from Malaga for that very purpose. But the first half of the game against Tottenham, before Deeney made his entrance, was instructive. Isolated against Tottenham’s de facto back three, Ighalo was a virtual passenger, starved of service and unable to do much with it anyway. Only when Deeney came on did Watford begin to resemble any sort of discernible threat.
The Deeney/Ighalo partnership has been instrumental in Watford’s success this season. They may be about to find out what happens when you break it.
Jonathan Liew
Agbonlahor could be Villa's renaissance man
Gabriel Agbonlahor has become a symbol for Aston Villa's shocking decline over the past five years, even earning ridicule on Sky Sports for an anonymous performance at Spurs in November.
There has never been any doubt that he is a Villa fan, though, so why did he choose to tarnish a rare highlight of the season by sniping back at his supposed detractors?
Agbonlahor had endured a painful wait of 11 months before scoring his first goal in Villa's 2-0 win over Norwich on Saturday.
He clearly needs to work on his fitness but there were clear signs that he can recover from a dreadful season to play his part in a great escape.
But hours after the final whistle he posted on his Instagram page "That was for all the haters I hope I have ruined ur Saturday #theyknowhotheyare".
The way he celebrated his goal - by declining to celebrate - also suggested that he feels wronged for all the criticism thrown his direction during a sorry season for the club.
He also remarked that "papers chat s***" when he was asked how close he came to leaving in January - but it's an open secret he was available for transfer last month.
But the Instagram post was certainly a peculiar way to mark his first goal in almost a year and left a sour taste - he should have used the moment to build bridges and focus on a brighter future.
Now he has made a rod for his own back and any more poor performances will surely see him bombarded on social media by the fans he wanted to prove wrong.
John Percy
- Telegraph