Arsenal: Danny Welbeck The Saviour Of The Struggling Strikeforce

Both Alexis Sanchez and Olivier Giroud have had time as the starting striker this season. Perhaps Danny Welbeck could be Arsenal’s strikeforce saviour.

As the summer faded and the football season was reinstated as the nation’s priority for the coming nine months, Arsenal had a striking shortcoming. With Olivier Giroud given an extended break as the season started thanks to his international commitments at the European Championships in June, Arsene Wenger had few options to turn to.

Ultimately, with opening the campaign with a tricky home tie against an effervescent Liverpool team under Jurgen Klopp, Wenger converted Alexis Sanchez from electric winger to free-roaming centre-forward.

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The Chilean excelled in the role throughout the first few months of the season. Not only were his own performances impressive, but the intensity and the tempo that he brought as the spearhead of the side produced a greater attacking intent of the team as a whole. Wenger had engineered a high pressing, high pace approach that dismantled opponents time and time again.

However, since then, Giroud has enjoyed time in the central role, Sanchez has chopped and changed between being a winger and a striker, and ultimately, Arsenal’s attacking form has tailed off as a result. In the title-ending 3-1 loss to Chelsea on Saturday, the North London outfit failed to create many opportunities whatsoever, finding themselves sounded out by a disciplined, stifling Chelsea defence.

Sanchez started up front in the game but Arsenal failed to get him in the game. When he was enjoying success earlier in the season, it had the feeling of an experiment that Wenger was forced into, one that was never going to be a long-lasting change. Even now, Wenger is seemingly swayed to Sanchez the winger, not the centre-forward. But Giroud has proven that he equally does not fit the team’s style thanks to a lack of mobility and dynamism in his movement off the ball.

Perhaps the saviour, then, is recently returned Danny Welbeck. The recently returned striker is a versatile forward, capable of playing both out wide and centrally. However, although he was excellent in the five-goal thrashing of Southampton in the FA Cup, he has been stationed out wide thus far, a role that he himself has said is not his preferred option.

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Welbeck is at his best as a centre-forward, making darting runs down the channels, in behind the opposition defence. He is intelligent in his movement, boasts a good first touch, is direct and deliberate in his dribbling and frightens defenders with his pace and power. Perhaps, then, as he finds his feet after yet another lengthy lay-off, Wenger may have found the solution to his struggling strikeforce.

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