Danny Welbeck started his Arsenal career in encouraging fashion, playing an active part in a thrilling 2-2 draw with Manchester City. But a dinked finish that came back off the post offered a reminder that he must still add a ruthless streak to his game, writes Adam Bate.
Tuesday 16 September 2014 09:12, UK
Arsenal fans. Meet Danny Welbeck. The England international had raised expectations after his brace against Switzerland earlier in the week and proceeded to produce a Gunners debut against Manchester City that offered plenty of encouragement without delivering the killing stroke.
It didn’t take long for Welbeck to endear himself to the home support. Showing speed, movement and strength, he was soon looking precisely the presence Arsene Wenger’s team have been lacking. It was only a matter of time before the big opportunity came.
One-on-one with Joe Hart, he opted for the dink. The goalkeeper was beaten but the ball cannoned back off the post. Minutes later Sergio Aguero chose a more routine finish at the other end to give City the lead. It was Welbeck’s encapsulated. Plenty of promise. Plenty of reservations.
Of course, for Manchester United supporters, the story is familiar. On Tuesday he returns to Germany with Arsenal to face Borussia Dortmund in the country where he made his final Champions League appearance in a United shirt. That two-legged affair might well have provided the defining moment in Welbeck’s United career.
Bayern seemed unable to cope with his pace and power at Old Trafford in April. Finally free of the defence, Welbeck had the chance to beat Manuel Neuer with the score goalless but made a poor choice. Neuer is not an easy man to chip and Welbeck was left looking foolish. That dink, again.
Nothing seems to frustrate quite like a striker’s refusal to put his foot through the ball. After all, the difference between a delightful dinked finish and a fluffed chip is the difference between being Andrea Pirlo and being Yann Kermorgant.
But in Welbeck’s case, it seems like something more. Wayne Rooney might have raged at him that night against Bayern but David Moyes was just disappointed. “At this level you need to be clinical,” said Moyes. “When you get the chances, you have to take them.”
Somewhere you half expected to see Sir Alex Ferguson going full Obi-Wan Kenobi, yelling ‘You were the chosen one’ – not at Moyes but at Welbeck. Sage judges appear convinced this is a young forward who is perhaps only a ruthless streak away from having it all.
Indeed, in his autobiography, it was Welbeck who Ferguson pointed out as the equal of Thiago Alcantara in Barcelona’s much vaunted academy and the better of anyone else among the next wave at La Masia. “What a good player,” he gushed.
But that lack of ruthlessness was not solved in a United shirt and that failed clip over Neuer’s head was as close as Welbeck came to adding to his 29 goal tally for the club - allowed to leave with only Louis van Gaal’s withering assessment for company. “He doesn’t have the record of Van Persie or Rooney and that is the standard,” said the Dutchman in midweek. “That is why we let him go.”
Now he’s a good Arsenal player instead. With Radamel Falcao available and the prospect of another season outside the Champions League, Van Gaal and the Manchester United money men just couldn’t afford to wait for the youth team graduate to come good. But the Welbeck conundrum is precisely the sort of project Wenger might relish.
It’s worth remembering that this is a player only two years older than Yaya Sanogo - a striker Wenger persisted with through 16 goalless appearances. Welbeck might be regarded in some quarters as a similar figure of fun, but there are indications that this could be the right player at the right club at the right time.
Firstly, the statistics from his final year at Manchester United are rather more encouraging than the popular perception might suggest. Welbeck netted nine Premier League goals despite starting just 15 matches in the 2013/14 season.
Strip out the often misleading penalty goals that’d tell you Steven ’10 pens’ Gerrard was a better goalscorer than Robin van Persie last term and the statistics are quite illuminating. Welbeck was among the top eight regular scorers in the Premier League last season in terms of goals per minutes on the pitch. And he’s in great company.
Importantly, he’s also younger than the seven players above him. Welbeck might be a victim of opinions about him that have been established while the player was still developing – perhaps even still growing – and some of this information ought to be discarded. It’s the sort of background noise a scouting department should overlook in order to ascertain a player’s true value.
Take that scoring record. Welbeck scored just one goal in 27 Premier League games in the 2012/13 season, but the man himself is in no doubt why. “I was playing on the left wing in a lot of my games,” he told Sky Sports earlier this year. “That’s something that didn’t help me in terms of scoring goals.
“If you play on the left wing it’s going to be difficult to get in the box, especially when you’ve got defensive duties and the right-back could be bombing on past you. Once you get in and around the box you get those opportunities to score.”
Last season there were rather more of those opportunities at United. All nine of Welbeck’s Premier League goals last season came when one or both of Rooney and Van Persie were off the field. Being asked to play wide in a 4-4-2 in the previous year, it was a rather different story - quite understandably so given that only one of his 13 starts that year came as a forward.
As any trigger-happy football chairman will happily tell you, it’s not about what someone has down in the past but what they’re going to do next that matters.
But for that blip the trend has been good – 0.31 goals per 90 minutes in 2010/11, 0.40 in 2011/12 and 0.56 last season. In other words, Welbeck’s Premier League record over 24 hours of football last year was better than one in two - and it is going in the right direction.
There is good reason to suspect that he’s also going in the right direction in heading to London. Wenger’s team is packed with creative midfield talent; a squad littered with wide players who might fancy themselves in attack, rather than strikers forced out wide. Those days are likely to be over for Welbeck.
It all seems set up for him. There is the intelligence to bring others into game and create space for Alexis Sanchez. There is the pace to stretch defences and offer a target for the radar-like passing of Santi Cazorla and Mesut Ozil. It’s the chance he craves – almost alarmingly so.
Speaking to him in March, it would’ve been easy for Welbeck to stress this ability to bring the best out of others. Instead he appeared determined to style himself as a goalscorer and that was further emphasised by his initial comments upon signing.
“I believe the style of play the manager's got, the boys play and with the magnificent players in midfield slotting balls through, I can run on to the end of those balls and slot them away,” said Welbeck.
“I'd like to bring pace and power to the game. At Arsenal, we're not short of combination football and I like to join in on that and get in behind defenders and try to get shots off at goal. I want to score some goals and help the team to achieve the right results.”
Fitness permitting, Welbeck will get the chance to get off the mark for Arsenal in Champions League action against Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday night, while his former United team-mates enjoy and endure the gap in their own fixture list.
It’s an opportunity to show that while his last tie against German opposition might have been the disappointing denouement of his United career, it doesn’t have to define his career as a whole. Next time though, Danny. Just put your foot through it, eh?
Arsenal take on Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League on Tuesday night and it's live on Sky Sports 5 HD (kick off 7.45pm)
