I know I must produce for 90 minutes - Walcott

The 19-year-old has broken his Premier League and Champions League ducks and produced several game-changing performances from the bench. It appears, though, that is not enough for the ambitious youngster.

Arsène Wenger hailed Walcott’s display against Reading as his “most complete yet”. The forward tormented defenders from start to finish with his nimble feet and blistering pace; that is exactly what he has been waiting for.

“I don’t want to be coming off the bench all the time,” Walcott told the matchday programme. “I want to get in the starting line-up and I know I need to produce what I do when I come off the bench into practise when I start the games. That's my next target.

“At the start of the season, I said I wanted to make 20 or 25 starts, and score 10 goals. At the moment I'm on 16 starts (Walcott was speaking before the weekend match) and five goals, so it looks like I will fall just short of that.

“I thought that was a reasonable target for the season, so I would have liked to have played a bit more than I have, especially lately because I feel I have been playing quite well, but not starting.

“The boss actually spoke to me and he said that my development is going really well at the moment. That's nice to hear. If I keep doing the right things, people will notice even if we don’t get the right results.”

One such occasion where a disappointing result overshadowed the teenager’s brilliance came at Anfield. Walcott ran practically the length of the pitch leaving four Liverpool players in his wake before squaring to Emmanuel Adebayor to convert. Within minutes, though, Steven Gerrard lashed home a penalty sending the Gunners crashing out of the Champions League.

“It's a shame obviously that we didn't go through, but I know myself what I have done. My display up at Liverpool is the sort of thing I want to do when I start the games — get the defenders on the back foot so that they don’t know what I'm going to do next.”

And where on the field does he feel most comfortable in doing that?

“I think I am more dangerous as a striker, and the boss sees me as a striker so I don’t think I have anything to worry about. I think I will play up front more next season which will be nice but I have to work hard to get in the right positions.

“I've been training and practising a lot at home too, because I have an Astroturf area there now as well so I work on things there and try to take it into training, and then into the games.”