The start that Jack Wilshere made for Bournemouth in the FA Cup against Crawley couldn't have been much better. He wanted to make an impact and he certainly did that. He wanted to score his first goal for the club and he wanted to start paying back the debt he perhaps feels he has to the club for how things ended in the past. He is keeping his end of the bargain but is he ready to take on the best in the Championship?
It would be easy to give Jack Wilshere a ticket to start straight away in the next league match. Tindall will have to decide not only whether this is best for Jack, but also whether it will sit okay with the other players in the squad. Everyone says Jack is hard working and has been well accepted by the players at AFCB. But Jack doesn't want to sit around on the bench. He wants to be a force in the team and that will mean needing to accommodate him and in preference to one of the other midfielders.
It is most likely that Lewis Cook's position would see the most immediate threat. Jack is similarly creative and yet has shown he can also skip past players and hit the target. His vision and understanding of the game are no doubt at a higher level than many of Bournemouth's players having starred in an Arsenal team and less so in a West Ham team. He is willing to teach what he has learned to other players like Lewis Cook who will be battling with him for the same place, and I expect he will do what he can to win as many people over as he can. But the best way for him to do that si on the pitch.
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If, on merit, Jack is the right and best option to start, then he should. It might be hard on the likes of Dan Gosling and Philip Billing as well, but Bournemouth need winners if they are going to climb back up the league and Wilshere is surely a winner. Just looking at the ease at which Jack scored his goal against Crawley underlined that he is a special player that can make the game look like child's play. Teams like Reading in Bournemouth's next match won't give Jack as much time and space as Crawley gave him, but I am sure Jack can step up a few more levels yet in his performances. It may take him a while to know what Josh King and Dominic Solanke's wavelengths are, but AFCB are only going to get the best out of Jack by playing him. So I'm all for getting him in the team, even if it is only for 40-50 minutes at first.
In other news, the Bournemouth Echo reports that Jason Tindall believes Jack Simpson and Nnamadi Ofoborgh have made their minds up to joining Rangers either in this window or in the summer.
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My guess is the plan is to eventually play Wilshere and Lewis Cook together, with Wilshere in the more forward role.
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