Jack Wilshere was not destined for management. At least not in the eyes of his former Arsenal teammate Theo Walcott. “To be honest, I never thought Jack would be a manager,” he admits. It’s not an outrageous lack of foresight from a man who first shared a dressing room with Wilshere, three years his junior, when he was just a brazen 16-year-old - albeit one with stratospheric potential.
A playing career that whet the appetite but never wholly fulfilled a craving, Wilshere’s emergence was as explosive as his decline felt instant. At 16, he was making his Gunners debut; at 19, he played metronome against arguably the greatest team of all time, Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona; at 26, his Arsenal dream was no more. Injuries proved defining, putting a lid on what he could achieve on the pitch.
