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Very Specific Football Question No.54: What is the meaning of Theo Walcott's different hair?

Theo Walcott is best known for three things: 1) being fast, 2) being not as good as people thought he would be and 3) having the same haircut for all eternity.

As this photo of the Arsenal winger (striker, whatever) reveals, he has shown an unswerving loyalty to the same short cropped hairstyle for every one of his 11 Premier League seasons.

Not since the days of West Ham striker Tony “short back and sides with a side parting on the right, please” Cottee has a professional footballer shown such dedication to one look. Theo’s haircut is like Cindy Crawford’s mole or Bono’s sunglasses. It is a part of him.

But this season, something has changed. Not his pace, nor his inability to fully realise his potential. It’s the hair.

In the 2016/17 campaign, Theo has been undertaking a bold and deeply surprising experiment to let his locks roam free. The direction they have chosen, emphatically, is up.

The hair’s growth was initially tentative, understandably given the unprecedented leeway Theo has given it. In the opening days of the season, the frightened wisps took baby steps following a decade of imprisonment, lengthening at a rate imperceptible to the eye of the average football fan.

But in recent weeks, the change has become impossible to ignore. Hair that had previously never exceeded lengths of 0.75cm has expanded to reach - at its highest point - distances approaching 4cm.

It doesn’t take a maths genius to work out that’s an increase of more than 500 per cent. It leaves us with the dramatic, irrefutable truth that Theo Walcott - for the first time ever - has changed his haircut.

The question is why? And what does it mean? And what will happen?

While some people change their hairstyle just because they feel like it, it is inconceivable that Walcott took this decision lightly.

Nobody does the same thing for 10 years and then one day does a different thing without some kind of cataclysmic change occurring in their brain.

Theo’s new hirsute look suggests something significant has happened to him, but what? He hasn’t put on weight, or got divorced, or joined UKIP. His partner did recently give birth to a baby boy, but he already had one of those.

His personal life is a picture of normality, so it must be football-related events that have caused this profound transformation.

Walcott’s absence from England’s Euro 2016 squad looks like the obvious catalyst.

At 27, he was supposed to be in his footballing prime, but he had gone backwards. He was of less value to his country now than he was at 17 years old - the young whippersnapper called up to Sven-Goran Eriksson’s 2006 World Cup squad.

It seems this realisation caused an existential crisis within Walcott that convinced him he needed to change his being at its very core - in other words, the hair.

Letting his mane grow out is a brave move, and one not without risk. Many footballers have suffered from a drastic change in hairstyle in the past - from Fernando Torres to Sebastien Schemmel - and been less effective (although most players remove hair rather than add it).

A determined, slightly hairier Walcott began this season in fine form, but in recent weeks he has been less impressive. The weight of expectation - and almost certainly of the increased amount of hair on his head - seem to be hampering him.

As such there is a sense we are approaching a crossroads for Walcott, and for his hair.

Will it retreat to its tried-and-tested style at the first sign of trouble, or will Walcott show courage and continue his experiment, despite the dangers?

Does he settle for being the same moderately successful Premier League footballer he has always been - a few goals a season, the odd England call-up, a handsome salary and short hair?

Or does he venture outside his comfort zone and make one last bid to maximise his huge potential - both on the pitch and on his head.

Every fibre of Walcott’s being must be telling him to get the clippers out right now - to go back to the warm bosom of what he has always known. But it would surely be a tragedy if Theo, having come this far, turned back now.

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