Do Not Sell My Personal Information
With Danny Welbeck set to return to Arsenal’s first-team immediately, @DanGaleaStJohn takes a look at the impact the England international can provide.
After 10 months out, the former Manchester United youth prospect is returning to full fitness. To say he endured a mixed first season is probably quite a fair statement. 8 goals is a very meagre return for a player bought for 16 million, but an upturn in form of Olivier Giroud saw Welbeck shifted to the wing and eventually relegated to the bench.
But then, a seemingly innocuous injury against Chelsea last April kept him out for over nine months, and he is within a couple of weeks away from making his return to the first team.
Welbeck was sold by Van Gaal because he was not deemed to be good enough for Manchester United. But then again, Van Gaal thought that Falcao, Van Persie and Rooney were (the former just cannot get grips to the Premier League, the second has aged beyond his prime, and the latter has only come of form last month).
Van Gaal also decided to get rid of Hernandez, who is now working wonders at Leverkusen. So his decision to sell Welbeck because he wasn’t good enough is hardly a fair judgement on the player’s ability. He has already expressed how free he is at Arsenal, with Wenger’s style of play suiting him more.
Welbeck has one thing that no other outfield player in Arsenal’s team has: a Premier League winner’s medal. Other than Cech, he is the only player in the squad to have won the Premier League, so he edges the rest with a winning mentality.
Alexis, Ozil, Campbell, Giroud are among the few to win the league in other countries with past teams, and that is surely a positive thing to have in a squad. But Welbeck is the only outfield play to boast of winning the Premier League.
Welbeck is still young, but has already been coaching by Sir Alex Ferguson and now Arsene Wenger. Footballers don’t get any luckier than that. Welbeck still has a lot of room for improvement, especially with regards to his finishing, but he has the potential to improve into a really good striker. His hat trick vs Galatasaray was a perfect example of that potential.
His focus right now is to slowly ease himself back in from injury, but at the same time he can prove to be a major asset with his Premier League experience, especially with the other British players in the team, who have won no league honours in their careers.
I don’t expect Welbeck to make an immediate impact because of the nature of his injury, but I expect his return to have a positive effect on the club as a whole
