Danny Welbeck described the third goal, the one which brought up the first hat-trick of his professional career in Arsenal’s Champions League drubbing of Galatasaray on Wednesday night, as the most difficult.
Surging on to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s weighted pass, he got there before the goalkeeper, Fernando Muslera, and he knew that he needed to execute the delicately dinked finish. The Emirates Stadium held its breath and the mind went back to the big moment of Welbeck’s Arsenal debut when he got himself into a similar situation against the Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart. The striker’s technique looked perfect, the chip arched over Hart and the ball headed for the far corner. Except that it hit the post and bounced out.
Against Galatasaray, it was always going to go in. It was Welbeck’s night, when everything he did drew appreciative murmurs, from the pace, power and sharp movement that unnerved the Galatasaray backline to the selfless tracking back. But when he found himself on the right side of those excruciatingly fine margins in front of goal, the death-or-glory territory of the top striker, it was difficult to ignore the part that confidence had played.
Nobody should be getting too carried away because Welbeck’s fledging Arsenal career has also featured the one-on-one miss at Borussia Dortmund when the score was 0-0 and the air-shot in front of goal against Tottenham Hotspur as his team trailed 1-0 on Saturday. Mercifully for Welbeck, Oxlade-Chamberlain was on hand to equalise from the loose ball. But Welbeck knows that one or two costly misses will not see him dropped or shunted out to the wing and he has been able to keep getting into the right areas. He talked after the Galatasaray victory about rhythm, about growing from game to game, and the adage about also having the confidence to miss appeared to resonate.
At Manchester United, the club he supported and where he rose up through the ranks, there were always higher-profile strikers ahead of him and at the time of his move to Arsenal on 1 September, there were at least three. Welbeck could never enjoy a sustained run in his favoured central role at Old Trafford but fate has conspired to construct the dream platform for him at Arsenal. Olivier Giroud, the club’s previous first-choice centre-forward, is out until the new year with a fractured tibia and any leader of the Arsenal line is going to get chances, given the creative midfield quality around him.
It has often been said that Welbeck lacks the instinctive ability of the very best finishers and it is doubtful whether this can be instilled on the training ground. But Welbeck can be encouraged; he can be selected regularly in his best position and he can make the correct runs over and over again. “If you’re getting goals and getting a run of games in your preferred position, your confidence is going to grow and performances are going to grow as well,” Welbeck said. “I’m really looking forward to building on these performances.
“When I’m playing with these sort of players, they are looking to slip the ball in behind and I am always ready for that. I’m looking to make the movement right and get in behind the defenders. I want to build an understanding with the players. It’s good to play with midfielders of this calibre and they are only going to create chances.”
Welbeck has been compared to Thierry Henry in the wake of his performance against Galatasaray and there was the echo of the Arsenal legend in the way that he took his second goal; opening up his body to curl a shot with the inside of his right foot into the far corner. The broader comparison is premature, at best, even if there is the shared narrative line of Arsène Wenger moving a young forward from the flank to a central role in eye-catching fashion.
Perhaps the better comparison is to Liverpool’s Daniel Sturridge. He struggled at Manchester City and Chelsea, when he was often shoe-horned in as a wide attacker but, started regularly as a central striker at Liverpool and given the confidence of everybody at the club, he has blossomed. “People can say I’ve not scored enough goals but you see the best strikers on the wing in a four-man midfield and see if they score goals,” Welbeck said. “Nobody can really criticise my finishing because they don’t really see me playing in a forward position too often.
“Maybe beforehand, I wasn’t getting through on goal if I was coming from a four-man midfield. It’s difficult to leave your position to go and get goal-scoring opportunities. But I’m getting into these positions much more regularly now and I want to be sticking the ball in the back of the net.”
It will be interesting to see whether Wenger recalls Giroud in the new year but Welbeck has three months to advance an irresistible case for himself. The challenges continue to come – Arsenal go to Chelsea in the Premier League on Sunday – and Welbeck is eager to rise to them. “We’re going to have to prepare physically, mentally and tactically very well for Sunday,” he said. “But we have got a good camaraderie, and we are all really looking forward to it – we are really confident.”