Those comments smack of a refusal to countenance the idea of change. If Wilshere does not see why he should not lunge into tackles, then how likely does it seem that he is open to the idea that perhaps he needs to refine other parts of his play, like becoming more tactically aware, more able to dictate rhythm and tempo, more consistently influential?
*nods* yep, yep.
I'm not sure it's down to Wilshere believing his own hype as Rory Smith suggests though (in that specific case, more just a lack of intelligence/logic). He just looks like a kid who is far too overzealous, too eager to impress and take big risks, rather than play smart and with more guile, which we know he can. As a CM, he's worse than he was in 2011 just because of this, but back then he was playing every week, and, with Nasri deciding to bottle the second half of the campaign, and Cesc completely checking out, he was
the man in our team.
Unfortunately, minutes may once again be hard to come by for him next season (I still maintain he's very good coming in off the right-flank though, always has been, so that's an option), but, at worst, this supposed "make-or-break" campaign probably won't lead to anything but another one in 15/16.
And if Wilshere missed 17 months from 2011-2013, that means he's missed nearly 20 in the past 3 years. I'm not really sure you can understate how huge that is to the development of a player in his late teens/early 20s. If his biggest issue is that he's trying to do too much, that sounds like one of the better problems you can have. Ramsey was similar. Too many Cruyff turns, too many hollywood passes, wild shots, etc. Wenger said:
“He had to come back to a more simple game. When you go through a bad patch in life you always go back to the basics. In football you slowly get confidence back and then you play naturally again.
“The problem is that if you play a great shot in golf or tennis, when you go to your next game you want to play the same shot again. But it doesn’t work like that. You have to do basics, basics, basics, and then slowly you get into the zone where it becomes easier.
It'll click for Wilshere eventually. The exact same thing applies to him and how he approaches football matches right now.