Jack Wilshere has confirmed on his official twitter account that he will play any part in Arsenals end of season run in. He will also not feature in England’s ill-fated campaign in Poland this summer. The ankle injury that has kept him from featuring for Arsenal all season will not be healed in time to play in the Red and White.
While there has been talk all season of various hoped for dates for return, most of us probably felt that we were unlikely to see our home-grown hero feature. Much like TV and RVP in recent seasons dodgy ankles have robbed us of a key player in our team.
The Boss spoke to the official site about Jacks injury and how devastated he was. In the same article he states that he hopes Jack will not be considered for selection for Team GB in the summer olympics. However we have all seen in the past how much attention the FA have paid to health concerns of our players in the past and if they decide to call Jack up there is nothing the club can do. Wilshere should be ready to feature in pre-season activity which would coincide with the London schedule.
The football portion of the olympics will run from 25/7/2012 until the 11/08/2012 and is an U-23 tournament with three over age players allowed in each team squad. The Premier League generally kicks off in the second weekend of August. If Jack is fit enough to be called up he could and probably will be joined in Team GB by The Ox, Ramsey (providing Welsh availability isn’t affected) & Gibbs. Ryo is likely to feature for Japan. Park will captain Korea(I know he doesn’t really count but still), Chamakh should feature as one of Morocco’s overs, Ignasi who has been used in defence this season should be involved with Spain while Carlos Vela will feature for Mexico.
This takes 8, possibly 9 players away from the pre-season programme with the club after a summer where roughly 10 (11 if you want to include Pods) of our players will feature in a more than likely injury inducing European Championships.
We will take a more detailed look at things in the summer but Jack not making the Euro’s could be the least of our team news injury wise over the coming months, I’m going to start crossing my fingers now for a clean squad wide bill of health come August.
@wicklowgooner
