Arsene Wenger says that the two serious injuries, and a smattering of smaller ones, suffered by Danny Welbeck have had a serious impact on the striker, but the Arsenal manager has backed his player ahead of tomorrow night’s clash with Ostersund.
With Alexandre Lacazette recovering from surgery and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang cup-tied the 27 year old will get the nod up front against the Swedish outfit, and he’ll be hoping to have a bigger role to play than in the first leg.
The Frenchman believes the pitch played a part in that, and also that two serious knee injuries have dented Welbeck’s confidence.
“Even with a muscular injury you lose faith in your body quickly,” he said. “One of the advantages of being young is that you feel undestroyable.
“It gives you an arrogance. But as soon as your arrogance is hit, you are lost.
“Sometimes the players are very confident, very arrogant but as soon as they lose that belief in their body, suddenly you are lost and you don’t know any more what is going on.
“I believe he has gone through a torrid time but he has come out well. I see signs in training now that are positive.
“If he can stay on the pitch and not be injured, I want him to stay here.”
The Frenchman is hopeful his experience on a difficult pitch last week will help restore some of that lost confidence.
“When we played in Ostersund it was a good test for him because you would think the player you don’t want to pick on an artificial pitch would be him because of his history,” he said.
“He came through well and I think for him, in his head, it was very important that he came out of that game without having any problems.”
Maybe it’s because of our training system. We should tweak something.
Good squad player to have. Physically dominant, a good defensive forward. And a forlorn possibility of him becoming a late blooming great goal scorer.
Yep, that’s about right. He’ll never lead the line or be one of our top scorers, but he can be a useful option from time to time.
Or maybe invest that time and role in a younger striker. If he succeeds then he could be the future ( see Rip van Winkle when we signed him from feyernoord).
If he fails ( Aliadiere, Sanogo, …..) we move on to the next
Welbeck needs game time at his age. He sees the players on the roster ahead of him and he realizes that he will have to leave to get the game time that he wants.
Good luck to him, he deserves a bit of good fortune, he may not be the most elegant of players but we’re going to need him, at least in the short term, with Lacazette injured and Aubameyang still adapting to a new, team, country etc.
Christ, when I first opened up the home page and saw this article with that photo, I thought “Fuck, Welbeck is injured?”
Don’t do that to us man.
Why can I not shake this feeling that our involvement in the EL is going to end on some mad, injury-scarred note, like Elneny or Xhaka playing as a false 9?
Was he ever good? Everyone knows who he is and he seems to be around forever…
@ “If he can stay on the pitch and not be injured, I want him to stay here.”
And if he doesn’t?
If you know Arsene then the answer would still be YES
I will cheer for him when he plays, but truth be told, I’ve never been able to figure out why we signed him. He’s a good option for a struggling Premier League team, not one aspiring to the top four, even as a squad player.
he was another panic buy by wenger
We signed him as per usual because he was available, not because he fit in some master plan
His goal knocked United out of the FA cup and we went on to win it.
For me that is enough to justify us buying him.
also, his header against leicester in the added time that didn’t quite make us “look back in may” but felt great at the time and still does? he probably scored a few more quite important ones, so yes, glad he’s been here.
hope he can turn it around, but to be fair, if he doesn’t, i wouldn’t shed a tear if he left in summer. as a 3rd option he’s probably just fine enough, but at this stage i’d rather see nketiah play in europe than him as welbeck seems to never have any impact whatsoever
Sanogo’s goal won us the top of the group game with BVB. Just saying
Yeah exactly and sonogo is a legend for it and also for that game against bayern.
Just play him as a striker….. by the time he gains confidence, he will be a nightmare to oppositions….. He is better than Sanogo….. #Just-passing-by
That’s where he played when Giroud broke his ankle at Everton.
By the end of the season they all played around 27 league games.
One had 16 league goals, the other 4.
He’s all we’ve got now and have to get behind him but one we can improve on and should. To keep thinking it’s a position problem or confidence issue all his career is just hoping it somehow clicks for him because he’s likeable.
His record against Azerbaijan, Malta, Turkey and Kazakhstan in qualifiers is very impressive though.
We as fans have always been supporting of players that have injury problems. Lately we seem to have a lack of tolerance towards our injury prone players.
If we were able to support RVP so fiercely until he finally came good then why not someone like Welbeck?
Because we knew Van Persie had phenomenal talent. Welbeck is nowhere near a player of that calibre.
He is the anti-Theo. Not extremely effective, not reliable physically or in his finishing, but we forgive him this and look to him as a forward even though he can’t consistently find a way to use his foot to finish a strike, for some reason we hope for the best. Theo, frustrating, annoying, never what we’d nor him seemed to expect from him early on, but could finish generally with his foot, had a position and took his chances, and we knew exactly what he was even if he thought other, or Wenger hoped for other (Theo thought himself an… Read more »