Walcott - We have learnt not to panic

Theo Walcott says that Arsenal's improved game management has made them a more efficient team.

The England forward was on target as the Gunners beat Everton to win the Barclays Asia Trophy on Saturday, seven weeks after he opened the scoring in the FA Cup final victory over Aston Villa.

One of the features of those wins was the comfort with which Arsenal saw out the games, and Walcott says that's a sign of the team's growing maturity.

"It was important that, when you’re 3-0 up, we kept the ball and frustrated teams," he said.

"When you frustrate teams it does always create gaps and someone doesn’t do their job properly, then we can kill it. We’ve learnt not to panic in games because there’s a lot of time for us to score goals and win a game.

"That’s the crucial thing that the manager’s put in our heads and we’ve definitely shown that now."

Nobody finished last season as well as Walcott and he admits that the summer break did not come at an ideal time for him.

"I didn’t want the season to end," he admitted. "Not getting in the team made it a frustrating season for myself but when you’re out for such a long time it’s difficult to get into a winning team.

"This is my first pre-season for two years so I want to work hard, get fit, and it’s a really exciting year for myself personally. This team can go very far.

"I’ve been in a lot of squads and this is one of the best that I’ve been involved in. I want to be a part of that. There’s something special in this group of players. We’ve got to keep this group together because I think that successful teams stay together for a long time.

"I think this team can be very successful from the two FA Cups now. The next big step is to challenge for the Premier League, which if we’d had our form in the second half of the season, could have been us coming first.

"You don’t want to use the word ‘if’ in sport so we want to make sure we do it from the start [this time]."