Arsenal: Danny Welbeck ‘success’ confirms summer need

Arsenal’s season closed out in a dull roar, but in the process, Danny Welbeck’s veiled success revealed just how crucial the summer is.

Arsenal will be out of the Champions League for the first time in two decades, and that means that there should be some big time changes this summer. That all starts with addressing just what those needs are, especially given the sudden impact of the 3-4-3 system. It has put a lot of new perspective on certain strengths that the Gunners had that we may not have known about.

For instance, defense. The depth in defense is starting to stand out with some quality options. Making it look like that porous defense we had been griping about may not need too much help.

But one need that we absolutely require, and which has been exemplified lately, is another striker.

The two options we have been forced to choose between are Danny Welbeck and Olivier Giroud. Neither one looks particularly well-suited for the 3-4-3. Giroud is a target man who is going to find his most use in the box fielding crosses, but with how quickly the attack counters and how much Wenger expects everyone to defend, the French striker can often get left behind.

Welbeck meanwhile, showed us yet again that, while he is a fantastic athlete and a solid creator, he just is not a goal scorer. Almost painfully not.

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And yet, you look at his stats, and he put up another two assists, making it look like he was another solid contributor of a solid offensive effort.

He wasn’t though. Danny Welbeck is not good at volleying the ball or fielding low crosses. I don’t know if it is bad coordination or what, but send a ball towards his foot, which the Gunners do rather frequently, and he completely whiffs or scuffs it.

Take for instance his first assist, which wasn’t an assist at all, but a scuff of the ball that ended up on Hector Bellerin’s foot. It was the same thing with his assist against Manchester City. His whiff ended up on Alexis’s toe and became Welbeck’s assist. His whiffs don’t always end up fortuitously on a fellow Gunners foot though.

It’s deceiving, that his ‘success’ seems to be coming late in the season when in fact we are just being reminded that he cannot be relied upon to score goals consistently. Neither can Giroud. But at least Giroud has shown the ability to be consistent with attempts on target and being a threat to the goal.

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Welbeck looks to be a creator, not a finisher. And that means that this attack needs someone reliable up front to finish off attacks with a viable threat.