Danny Welbeck | 2011-14 Performances

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Absolute HERO.

He deserved that tonight - he's been quite good at times this season, but that poor goal tally has led to a lot of criticism. Really pleased that he put together a display like that in front of the world(huge huge audience) & got a goal!
 
Brosstan said:
Great game by him, MotM for us today mostly because of drive and important tracking back.

RedLars and GB, you are being petty as feck btw.
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But you seriously suggested last week that we should loan him out. Seriously.
 
RedLars said:
But you seriously suggested last week that we should loan him out. Seriously.
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:nono: just :nono:

This kid is too good to loan out, we have 4 strikers and we sometimes play 3 of them, there's plenty to go round and I'm sure he learns more in training alongside RVP than he would do on bloody loan in a shit team.
 
His work in the second half on Alonso, in keeping the ball and driving forward with it was excellent.

Terrific display of pace, power and desire. More of that please.
 
I don't think you can over estimate the impact of him scoring at the Bernabeu will have on his confidence. He had a break out season 11-12 and I feel like in the last six months his career has stalled a little bit. He's only managed to start 10 times in the league and scored just the once, but hopefully scoring against Madrid will give him the confidence to kick on and find the back of the net more often. He's got the talent no question.
 
In many ways the two goals sum up a fundamental difference between the two sides, the Madrid superstar bought from United but bought by United as a potential, a prospect we would nurture scoring a fantastic goal in reply to a goal scored by a United youngster, academy trained and hailing from Longsight.

They buy stars, we make them.

A huge night for Welbeck he was incredible throughout, his ball control and technique are outstanding. I hope in many ways this is a break-through goal which opens the floodgates. If you can do it there, you can do it anywhere.
 
Extremely proud of him and the maturity he showed. Own product leading the way against the top teams. Couldn't ask for more.
 
I've been one of his biggest critics. I get frustrated watching him. He just doesnt seem to have a footballing brain sometimes, and can be too casual when you want him to really drive at a chance (like Chico does)

BUT..... If the Real Madrid defence cant handle him, and they really couldnt, lets face it he couldve had a hatrick last night, then he must be doing something right. Total respect for that performance Danny W, keep it up !

In the pre-match press conference Fergie was asked "when you lost to Barcelona in the last ECL final, you said you needed to build a team to match them, how do you think you're doing with that?" .... Clearly baiting Fergie, but I loved his (very cool) response.... "At this club we are very good at bringing on young talent. We give them a chance to develop. This is how we sustain our success over long periods"

Beautifully put

Basically, we know our younger players arent going to get it right all the time, but we'll give them every chance to succeed.

We've all got mad at the likes of Rafael, Cleverley, Welbeck for making mistakes, but Fergie's unswerving faith is what matters, and we've all been rewarded time and time again. Absolute Legend of a manager
 
I don't see what somebody as slow as Alonso can do about Welbeck. It's a great weapon to have unearthed for the second leg. We now know the guy who starts everything for them can be nullified because we have a guy who's bigger, stronger, faster and prepared to be nothing short of a pain the arse.
 
It was not too long ago that Danny Welbeck was worried about stepping on Cristiano Ronaldo’s toes. Upon his promotion to the Manchester United first team, the striker was allocated a locker next to the Portuguese. “You’re thinking, ‘Am I a bit too much in his space?’ ” he recalled last year.

The story is instructive in more ways than one. Most obviously, it underlined what a courteous and humble young man Welbeck is, although given that he was brought up with strong values by religious, hard-working parents, who emigrated from Ghana in the late 1970s to settle in the tough Manchester district of Longsight, that should come as little surprise.

Niceness in football, though, can be a double-edged sword, and so while no one who has had the pleasure of knowing or working with Welbeck would want him to change, one of the criticisms hoisted in his direction is that that niceness has sometimes been a little too evident on the pitch.

With his height, muscular physique and running power, Welbeck has the attributes to be a “bully” and “monster” to opponents, words Gary Neville, his former United team-mate, used to describe Ronaldo in the build-up to last night’s tantalising Champions League encounter between the Barclays Premier League leaders and Real Madrid. Such a description could also be applied to Didier Drogba, the former Chelsea striker, who has been arguably the best lone leader of a forward line in football in the past decade. The Ivorian could hold up the ball, run with it, score all manner of goals and offer an aerial threat that was often as important defensively as it was offensively.

There have been more than just passing glimpses of Welbeck’s capability as a target man and battering ram, both for United and England, over the past couple of seasons. Only last month against Liverpool at Old Trafford, for example, the 22-year-old gave the visiting defence a torrid time.

But it was hard to escape the feeling at the Bernabeu of a striker truly starting to believe in and utilise the gift of pace and power bestowed on him. There was nothing timid here about Welbeck’s display. Just ask Sergio Ramos and Raphael Varane, Real’s centre-half pairing. They were never given a moment’s rest from Welbeck, who dragged them all over the place and hounded them into making mistakes. With Robin van Persie relatively subdued by his high standards and Wayne Rooney, for all his clumsiness in possession, being forced to do the work of two men given that Shinji Kagawa went missing, Welbeck became the focal point of United’s attack, drifting inside from the flanks and also taking up dangerous positions in the centre. We should not get carried away. This was no masterclass, but it was a serious shift all the same. No wonder he departed in the second half with cramp.

Speak to those who watched Welbeck’s rise through the academy ranks at United and several will tell you that he was the best young player they ever saw, even if he was rejected by Manchester City at the age of 8, a mistake that has already come back to haunt them. It was Welbeck, after all, whose industry helped to win the free kick from which Van Persie earned United a dramatic 3-2 win at the Etihad Stadium last December, a crucial result in the club’s move towards opening up a 12-point lead at the top of the Premier League.

The problem, though, was always going to be how he coped with the transition to first-team football, when he could not be expected to beat three or four men and then score as he often did for United’s youth teams. Added to that was the growth spurt he underwent in his late teenage years. It was nothing new for Welbeck – he had suffered with Osgood-Schlatter disease in his early teenage years, a condition that often affects youngsters who play a lot of sport and which manifests itself in pain beneath the knee caps – but it still required some coming to terms with. Against Real, the benefits of that robust frame were easily apparent.

Welbeck’s goal told only half the story but given that he has been criticised in some quarters for a lack of them, its importance cannot be understated, neither to United’s hopes of progressing to the Champions League quarter-finals when Real visit Old Trafford for the return leg on March 5 or his own confidence. Sir Alex Ferguson had laughed when asked recently if he needed to keep Welbeck’s chin up given his shortage of goals? “Up?” the United manager said incredulously. “Keeping it down maybe. He is an amazing boy, Danny.”

But strikers do need goals, and while Van Persie, Rooney and Javier Hernandez have scored more than enough to compensate for Welbeck’s struggles in that regard, his towering header after 20 minutes will have been a huge shot in the arm.

“If that feeling was a drug I would be dead,” Welbeck said when describing the goal he scored against Stoke City on his Premier League debut for United in November 2008, nine days before his 18th birthday. It will have been a similar feeling last night. Make no mistake about it: this was the biggest goal of Welbeck’s career. And he has scored some important ones for England.

A lot of attention has rightly focused on Ronaldo’s stupendous header to draw Real level, but just as Patrice Evra had no hope of beating his former team-mate to the ball, so Ramos was made to look small and weak by Welbeck as he rose to power home Rooney’s corner with unerring timing and accuracy.

Whereas some players have been guilty of allowing a goal or two to go to their head – Federico Macheda, another striker at United, is a prime example of that – there is no danger of that happening with Welbeck. Forget Ferguson or his team-mates, Welbeck’s family, for a start, would not allow it. His parents Victor and Elizabeth keep him grounded. For all his football commitments, they demanded he work hard at school and the player left with nine GCSEs, including As in English Literature and Maths. Beyond mum and dad, Welbeck’s equally likeable two elder brothers, Chris and Wayne, are omnipresent and perform the multiple roles of agents, advisers, friends and confidants. It is the sort of set-up that Ferguson longs for his players to have and one which Neville – who made a habit when he was at United of trying to encourage younger players not to hand their lives over to predatory agents – would be quick to approve of.

A gentile monster-in-the-making? On the evidence of last night, that seems entirely possible.
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http://blogs.thetimes.co.uk/section.../?shareToken=914e075a362d0890d358dce7f1ba8d4d

Brilliant article. Love Danny.
 
Said a while ago that I prefer Welbeck to play on our wing rather than most if not all of our other wingers, precisely for the reasons we saw yesterday.


Great player.
 
londonredmaniac said:
Really hard to believe some united fans still don rate him. It astounds me.
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Doesn't astound me at all - he is labeled a striker and doesn't have the goals that come with that label.

For me though he is building up into being a player that could turn out maybe not in a prolific goal scorer but, one that will contribute both with goals and a lot of other things that will make him a invaluable for years to come.
 
Showed just as much finesse, close control, pace and awareness as his Spanish and world class counterparts yesterday.

The doubters, there you go. This kid is the real deal and feck the goal tally. Ronaldo and Rooney didn't start banging them in until their mid 20's.
 
londonredmaniac said:
Really hard to believe some united fans still don rate him. It astounds me.
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It's really not hard, after the underwhelming first half of the season he's had. He'll tell you that himself. The player had an awesome game, which means he can hopefully kick on from here. It does not mean that his doubters were blind prior to.
 
I think if we got to the final SAF would start him, and I wouldn't have any concerns about it he's that good.
 
Shimo said:
Doesn't astound me at all - he is labeled a striker and doesn't have the goals that come with that label.

For me though he is building up into being a player that could turn out maybe not in a prolific goal scorer but, one that will contribute both with goals and a lot of other things that will make him a invaluable for years to come.
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He's labeled a striker where? On FIFA? Why do people get so held up on these labels given to players? Just watch the matches and see what they bring, its not all black and white.

With regards to the second part, that much has been obvious for a while. He'd be underutilised if asked only to try and poach goals, he's capable of much more.
 
Prodigious technical talent, industrious as feck, and a smart and imaginative player, too.

I'm getting more and more sure that the likes of Cleverley and Welbeck will reach the very top. They seem like such smart and dedicated players, and they seem like they can master more and more of their footballing tools as their careers progress.

Chuffed that he scored that goal. Really deft header... Moments like that and his goal against Sweden ought to have alerted the world at large of his menacing talent.
 
I don't think he should displace Van Persie, Rooney or even Hernandez as a central forward but he is improving all the time as a winger and his work rate and height are things we benefit from like we saw last night. He should start ahead of all our wingers atm.
 
He was fantastic yesterday. With time he'l add goals to his game and then he'l be truly appreciated. His game apart from scoring is top notch.
 
Welbeck is starting to remind me more and more of Park (in a good way). As in a player you play in the big games because he will outrun and outhustle the shit out of everyone else on the pitch.

When played against "lesser teams" who invite pressure on he's not as effective (especialy when played out wide), but when we're the ones on the back-foot around half the time (or more in this case) he becomes invaluable.

If it wasn't for De Gea saving our asses countless times yesterday Welbeck would be my clear MOTM. RvP's overall display was sex, however he was far from clinical in front of goal (usualy how people describe Danny's performance).
 
It must be really pleasing for the likes of Rene, who've spent years nurturing the likes of Welbeck, Jones and Cleverley (who obviously didn't play yesterday), to see the youth products perform so admirably on such a huge stage.

Every time I see Danny do well in a big game, I think of the video of him as an 11 year old performing some training drills with van Nistelrooy and Keane.

We really do have a unique youth academy.
 
Rene didnt nurture jones. But either way yes it must be pleasing to see his talents coming through, just waiting for the next batch to continue the patterns.
 
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