Arsene Wenger says he’s glad to have Theo Walcott back in the Arsenal first team fold for the first time in over two months.

The England winger, who hasn’t featured since scoring his first goal of the season in the away win against Marseille back in September, will likely start on the bench when former club Southampton visit the Emirates on Saturday having fully overcome an abdominal problem which required surgery.

Speaking to Arsenal Player, the boss admitted that Walcott’s pace and ability to burst behind opposition defenders is something he’s happy to have at his disposal again.

“He is one of the players who goes behind [the defence] without the ball. Strikers who get behind the defenders is a very important quality and Theo [Walcott] has that quality.

“Of course you miss a player like Theo Walcott. Theo had a good start to the season, he scored goals, he provided chances and had assists. He can always give you a different option in the game and that is of course vital.

“You always want to have a perfect balance [in attack]. If you look at our results our balance was not too bad, but Theo has different qualities to other players and I am very pleased that he’s back.”

After quite a lengthy stint out Walcott should be chomping at the bit. He’s a long way behind his goal scoring tally for this time last year, he’s got Melvin Orwell’s ‘Mesmertrons‘ awaiting him and having missed England’s last four games could do with a stringing together a few decent performances for Arsenal to ensure he doesn’t miss out on another major international tournament.

Welcome back Theo. In other fitness news, the boss confirmed that Lukas Podolski was still three weeks away from fitness while Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Yaya Sanogo won’t feature until the New Year.

“Podolski is not too far away, I would say three weeks. He is doing fitness training on the pitch. He starts to do some ball work too, he still needs two or three weeks before we see him on the pitch for Arsenal.

“Chamberlain is at least one month, Sanogo is January too, Diaby will be March.”

There’s also a chance Tomas Rosicky won’t feature on Saturday with the boss revealing the Czech international is still overcoming the effects of flu.

“Tomas was ill, he had one or two [normal] training days, he could be in the squad as well on Saturday. We have a final test on Friday.”