Wenger: Walcott can be a prolific goalscorer

Arsene Wenger is confident Theo Walcott has what it takes to become a prolific goalscorer in the wake of his strike in Arsenal’s 2-0 Premier League win against Stoke City on Saturday.

The 26-year-old got the nod ahead of Olivier Giroud and proved Wenger right by opening the scoring just past the half-hour mark, having spurned a couple of earlier openings.

“I started with Walcott to use his movement,” Arsenal manager Wenger explained. “I know Stoke are a compact, organised team in their own half and Theo could find little pockets to get in there and maybe that you get two or three chances to counter attack at home so maybe you can use that.

“He scored a great goal because you needed technical quality to score and timing in the finish.

“Theo has chances. He can be a prolific goalscorer. When you come out of the game and look at the amount of chances he had.

“The bigger the belief he has to score the more he will score. But he gets in good situations.

“I think at the moment we play every three days for four weeks. I will have to rotate the strikers without robbing their confidence. But you cannot always play with the same player every three days especially up front.”

Wenger also hailed his side’s performance as they recorded their third league win of the season.

“I believe we put in a very strong performance. Technically we had our moments in the first half and we played the football we wanted to play and created several chances,” he added.

“Maybe if I wanted to be critical I could say that that there is too big a difference between the number of chances we created and the number of goals we scored but that will come quickly once you win your games at home.

“We are the team that has created the most chances since the start of the season and we had 30 shots on goal here and continuously created chances from the first to the last minute and the players had the quality to score so at some stage that would have come.

“I also believe we have stabilised out defensive record, we have not conceded after a difficult start we did not concede against Liverpool and at Newcastle and today so that is good for our future. “