.. AS SAM SAYS £20M WAS A ‘NO-BRAINER’ FOR PREM’S THIRD-HIGHEST-SCORING ENGLISHMAN

PAY just £20million for a Premier League forward who scored 19 goals last season? To Sam Allardyce the response was instant: “It’s a no-brainer.”

So Theo Walcott today returns to the Emirates two weeks after leaving, having confirmed Allardyce’s analysis with the two goals that sunk Leicester in midweek.

If Walcott’s move north was a surprise, then perhaps the bigger shock was the relatively low fee for a player who was the third-highest-scoring Englishman in the Premier League last season.

Yet Allardyce (right) defended Arsene Wenger’s decision to sell at that price.

“I think a lot of negotiation was done by Theo because of his service to the club,” he said. “But the opportunity to take a player with last season’s goals record and that quality wasn’t a big decision for me.

“He could have gone back to his old club Southampton, who were our big rivals, but he preferred the challenge here at Everton.

“There are no easy negotiations with Arsenal, believe me, but eventually the insistence from Theo that he wanted to leave, plus the service he gave, was a factor.”

Allardyce sees the partnership Walcott can forge with Seamus Coleman – who he described as “superhuman” after his incredible comeback from 10 months of injury on Wednesday – as a key influence for Everton over the next few years. And if he had one message about Walcott’s worth and talent, then it was this: “I think if he’d been playing a lot this season he would have been happy to finish his career at Arsenal. “But because he wasn’t getting games at Arsenal he looked at his career and decided he had to leave. He chose us and he can be a key player for us.”