Jack Wilshere forgets, once again, not to smoke

Here at TSF, and individually as writers, we're all about personal choice. You want to wear flip flops with a suit? Okay, go for it. It's not what we'd do, but you can rock that look if you want. It's not for us to tell you what you can and cannot do in your lives.

It's in that spirit that I present this - another story in which Jack Wilshere makes a personal choice that seems dumb, or at the very least, shortsighted. Seems he was caught by a photographer at a nightclub, with some ladies,and - shock horror - A BASEBALL HAT ON BACKWARDS! Oh wait, no, that's not the problem; people can wear baseball hats backwards and still be the best, most awesome baseball player, athlete, and person in human history (ED. NOTE: Author grew up in Seattle, is biased).  No, dear readers, it wasn't the hat - Jack's crime was, once again, smoking.

I personally do not give a damn whether someone smokes or not. Again: your life, your lungs, your choice. But I would gently suggest to young Mr. Wilshere that, as a professional athlete, long long gone are the days when a soccer player, or any elite athlete, can get away with smoking or drinking or any other sort of deleterious behavior. The demands of professional sports, particularly for younger players still trying to become first team regulars, are just too great to risk throwing it away on something as dumb as a smoke.

I mean, it could be that the three occasions on which Wilshere was caught smoking are really the only three he has ever smoked, which...whatever; as they say in politics, though, the optics of it are so bad that it doesn't seem worth it. If he's a regular smoker, well, I guess we should be impressed that someone with reduced lung capacity in relation to his non-smoking coworkers has made it this far in pro sports.

Either way, patience may be running out for young Jack at Arsenal - I haven't seen any rumblings of "if he does this again we're selling him", but as he struggles to get back to fitness and as he fails to cement an automatic first team place, the question "is he worth the hassle" has to start being asked at some point soon here, does it not?