Nicholas backs Wilshere to silence critics

The 25-year-old is back fit after a fractured leg sustained when on loan at Bournemouth last season and is available for Monday night's Premier League game against West Brom.

The England international got a valuable 90 minutes under his belt in Arsenal's narrow victory over Doncaster Rovers in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night and is likely to play some part when the 'Gunners' face BATE Borisov in the Europa League on Thursday night with Arsene Wenger expected to make changes and rotate his squad.

Former Scotland international Nicholas believes that Wilshere was right in snubbing interest from elsewhere during the summer and believes that the player can still have a role to play in the Arsenal squad going forward.

Speaking to 'Sky Sports', Nicholas said: "For the first time in a long time I think the signs are swaying towards him getting first-team football again and earning a role in Arsene Wenger's squad.

"He won't start against West Brom and it will probably take him a lot of time to get over his first 90 minutes, when he was probably man-of-the-match, but if if they can get 2-0 up then the crowd would certainly love to see him get 20 minutes.

"Then on Thursday night, against BATE Borisov, I'm looking at him getting another 90, so he's on the right track.

"A lot of people have said he won't get into the team because of Mesut Ozil but he doesn't necessarily have to play there, but he'll get opportunities in the Europa League and the Carabao Cup."

The 55-year-old also praised the midfielder for his determination to come back from so many injury problems, saying that even Spurs fans would admit that he is a very committed and single-minded individual and backed him to beat off some of the competition in the Arsenal engine room to return to the forefront of Wenger's thoughts once again.

"None of us, in all honesty, think he can get back to where he was four or five years ago because the injuries have been so severe, but if he can get close to that then he's still worth keeping," Nicholas explained.

"Is he a better footballer than Granit Xhaka? Yes. He's certainly better than Mohamed Elneny and Francis Coquelin, and things are starting to fall in place for him where he's going to get opportunities.

"Even Tottenham fans would have to acknowledge he's shown remarkable determination to bounce back again and he's got too much talent for Arsenal to give up on him.

"He went to Bournemouth to get playing time and maybe it didn't go quite as well as he would have liked but he showed the willingness to keep trying.

"Put it this way, I'd much rather Wilshere was on the bench than Elneny or Coquelin."