re: Arsenal 2014/15 Season Long Thread

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Jumbeauxlaya

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Hearing Falcao has failed a medical.

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Could it affect Welbeck deal to Arsenal?

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*mostly from Rom
Absolutely fricking devastated to hear he's going to you lot, he is LOVED by majority of United fans and has the potential to be a fantastic player.
One of the biggest criticisms against Danny Welbeck is he doesn’t score enough goals. He’s scored 20 goals in the league over the past three seasons, which is still more than £50m man Fernando Torres, but nowhere near what you would expect for a quality forward. However he is rarely ever actually played up front, he is tossed out onto the wing or brought on for a 30 minute cameo.
For United fans who want Welbeck sold, that strange sort of red whose mentality I genuinely don’t understand, they look at his stats and claim that he isn’t and won’t ever be United quality. Even without my bias towards Welbeck, I find it weird that anyone could look at a player at 23 and write off their future. To believe that the form of a player when they’re still years away from their peak determines what sort of player they could become seems totally barmy to me. I’m not suggesting that because a player has come up through the ranks and loves the club he deserves his place in the team regardless of how he plays, but why anyone couldn’t be a bit more patient with a player like that confuses me. At least see what he is capable of when given a fair crack of the whip. It makes you wonder whether all fans are like this and how many of them end up with egg on their face. I wonder what those Guingamp fans made of a 23-year-old Didier Drogba. They paid £80,000 for him after he scored 5 goals in 21 appearances for Le Mans, I wonder whether they were impressed with his return of 3 goals in 11 games. With 8 goals in 32 appearances as a 23-year-old, 0.25 goals per game, I wonder how many people wrote him off similar to how people write off Welbeck despite him being an England Internatiol Premier League winner.
In the year that Eric Cantona turned 23, what were Marseille fans saying about his 5 goals in 22 appearances? His club were happy to palm him off to Bordeux, where he scored 6 goals in five months. Cantona was 27 before he was getting in to double figures every season, he is now remembered as one of our best ever played an absolute phenomenon.
Nicolas Anelka scored 4 goals in 20 games for Liverpool when he was 23, after PSG loaned him out when he fell out with the coach, with a record of 2 goals in 12 games. Liverpool opted against signing him on a permanent basis though and went for El Hadji Diouf instead, leading Anelka to sign for City, who had just been promoted to the Premier League.
Even players like Daniel Sturridge, who scored 21 goals in 29 games last season for Liverpool, couldn’t displace Torres from Chelsea’s starting line-up and scored just 1 goal in 7 appearances when he was 23. What a difference a year makes. He was another victim of being shoved out onto the wing and struggled hugely, now he's easily one of the best in the Prem/world.
Aged 23, Edison Cavani had a scoring rate of 0.38 goals per game, Alessandro Del Piero 0.36, Teddy Sheringham 0.33, Karim Benzema 0.3, Ian Wright 0.24, Diego Forlan (at United) 0.24 and Dwight Yorke 0.16. The list goes on. Look at all the things those players went on to achieve after the age of 23, the successes they massively contributed towards, that they just weren’t capable of when they were the age Welbeck is now.
At 23-years-old, you don’t know what a player will become. Drogba was useless at 23 and ten years later he had been instrumental to a club winning the European Cup, several Premier League titles, several FA Cups and several League Cups. Guingamp fans would have likely laughed at the notion of this. I’ll repeat, I’m not saying Welbeck will emulate Drogba, simply that some players fulfil potential later than others. It stands to reason that if all these players excelled after the age of 23, there’s every possibility the same could apply to Welbeck. Last season Danny Welbeck played 25 games for United and scored 9 goals, which is a rate of 0.36 goals per appearance. As the season drew to a close, only three players had a better goals per minute rate than Welbeck (excluding penalties).
In the six games that Welbeck started in the league over the Christmas period in the absence of Robin van Persie, Welbeck scored six goals. The season before last, Welbeck played on the wing in almost every game he played. You would still imagine a winger should score more goals and he didn’t have a great season when out of position, but that shouldn’t be used as a stick to beat him with. If we are to judge him as a striker, then how effective he was as a winger is irrelevant.
The simple fact is, when the guy starts up front regularly he scores goals. Now he will be playing up top week in week out for Arsenal he will flourish and improve immensely. He will become a 15-20 goal a season striker at the least.
His work-rate is also crazy, he will press and rush the opposition defense, force them into mistakes, run the channels, he's great.
You've signed a fricking beast.

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. Shocked we loaned Jenks at this point.

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