Arsenal's Jack Wilshere Is in Danger of Throwing Away His Talent

It wasn’t meant to be like this for Jack Wilshere. 

On Saturday afternoon, the Arsenal man began his surprise season-long loan at Bournemouth by playing in the rain in a friendly against AC Milan at the Vitality Stadium.

Only weeks ago, he would have expected to have been a little over 1,000 miles away in Slovakia with the rest of the England squad as they prepared for the World Cup qualifier in Trnava to start Sam Allardyce’s reign as manager.

Wilshere was a member of England’s squad at Euro 2016 this summer, but one of Allardyce’s first acts was to discard him.

The 24-year-old is having to get used to rejection, for ahead of Wednesday's transfer deadline, Arsenal also made it known they were prepared to live without him for the time being, allowing him to spend this season playing on the south coast.

This has been a humbling week for Wilshere and represents a steep decline for a player once feted as the future of English football.

His ambitions this season suddenly became a lot more mundane: help Bournemouth, without a win so far this season, avoid relegation rather than be a part of Arsenal’s pursuit of both the Premier League and Champions League.

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Wilshere will be keen to portray it as a bold and brave move, designed to restart his career and catapult him back in to the Arsenal side for next season.

He could have festered on the fringes of this Arsenal side, but he now has a weekly stage to prove to Gunners boss Arsene Wenger that he should be brought home.

But the move to Bournemouth also represents an enormous risk; even if he is a success in these more modest surroundings, it could only serve to prove he has found his level.

Rather then earn him a return ticket to Arsenal, it could cast him as a player better suited to relegation battles and the bottom half of the Premier League.

When has prospering at Bournemouth ever meant a player could do the same at Arsenal?

This is a backward step Wilshere might never recover from. 

Here is a player who could thrive in the company of Harry Arter and Andrew Surman but then look distinctly average when placed back alongside Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez.

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The word "potential" is still routinely attached to Wilshere, but he will turn 25 in January, an age when potential has usually been realised.

Wilshere made his Arsenal debut in 2008, a full eight years ago, so he has had more than enough time to prove himself. But so far, it hasn’t happened.

Maybe it is time to accept a new reality; Wilshere possessed talent and could have been a significant player, but now he plays for Bournemouth and wasn't selected for the England squad even after their woeful showing at Euro 2016.

When was Wilshere’s last great season for Arsenal, or even his last great performance? When did he last dominate a game for the Gunners? Examples are increasingly being lost in the mists of time.

Wilshere’s best season for Arsenal was arguably as far back as 2010-11, when he truly broke into the first team and English football began to get excited about this youngster who played with such class and composure.

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But in the five years since then, he has started just 49 Premier League games for Arsenal, as a mounting list of injuries have slowly ground him down.

The comparisons with such all-time greats as Xavi and Andres Iniesta, once offered by former Barcelona man Dani Alves, per David Kent of MailOnline, belong to a different and more hopeful time—and frankly now appear vaguely ridiculous. 

Xavi himself helpfully said last year, as reported by John Cross of the Daily Mirror, that: “If [Wilshere] had a career that had been injury-free, we would be talking about one of the top central midfielders in Europe, [because] with all respect, he doesn’t play the English way.”

Injuries can be a relevant but often convenient excuse for Wilshere. Even when he has been fully fit, he has underwhelmed and failed to assert himself.  

A record of six league goals in 105 league appearances for Arsenal reveals the rather more sobering truth of a career that has failed to take off.

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Such a lack of football so deep into his career could work to his benefit, making him fresh when others might be growing weary, but it could also have left him with a physique not attuned to the demands of playing over 50 games a season.

Wilshere has so far never been able to prove he has the body or stamina to play a full season, and he is running out of time.

The move to Bournemouth admirably shows Wilshere is willing to put his ego to the side and work hard to prove himself when he could easily have stayed in London with Crystal Palace or been lured by the glamour of playing in Italy for AS Roma.

In years to come, this move could be seen as the point when he finally became the player he had always threatened to be when he first broke through.

But Wilshere might also discover that once you drop down to a lower level, you could end up staying there.