Arsenal: Caution needed while anointing Danny Welbeck a hero

Arsenal witnessed another sparkling goal from Danny Welbeck, but let’s all take a step back before calling him a tried and true hero of the cause.

There aren’t many Arsenal players that are more celebrated upon scoring than Danny Welbeck. The Englishman is an athletic stallion, without a doubt one of the most all around talents in the Premier League in terms of raw ability; speed, strength, intelligence, he has it all.

He seems like the ideal striker and, more times than not, against his former club Manchester United, he is. He has made a habit out of scoring against them regularly and that should absolutely be celebrated.

But we need to be careful with the easy branding of him being a hero. There are fresh takes on Welbeck out there saying he has proven that he excels in this new formation and is bound for greatness, yada yada.

That’s all well and good, but he has seen very little time at the spear-point of this 3-4-3, so not only is that a bit preemptive, but the entire nature of Danny Welbeck requires a broader scope than what he does in any individual performance.

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The simple fact is that Welbeck is not a consistent goal scorer. That has always been a problem with whichever club he finds himself on and, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like an easily fixable problem, because Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson both had cracks at turning him into a cold-blooded finisher and neither has found success. At least not as of yet.

Take this year for instance. Welbeck scored for the first time in in his fifth appearance with the club. It was a brace and an assist against Southampton, a game where he was the star of the show and any number of Gooners swore up and down he was here to stay, this was the new Danny Welbeck.

He only accumulated one goal and one assist in his next ten appearances. He had chances, he contributed to the game very well. But when it came to putting the finishing touches on then ball, there was nothing there. And I hate to be nit-picky, but that assist he registered against Manchester City came from a whiffed shot that dribbled to Alexis Sanchez, who put away the winning goal.

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I’m not trying to take anything away from Danny Welbeck. His goal against United was huge yet again. But we need to be realistic. He isn’t the striker that we need. Give him a bit more time to see if he can develop that finishing touch, absolutely, but one more goal doesn’t make him the solution.