While Arsenal fans love Danny Welbeck, there’s no mistaking his talent for rather… fluky assists.
Welbz has a habit of setting up other players by miskicking the ball himself, which was demonstrated perfectly during Arsenal’s Emirates Cup clash against Sevilla last Sunday.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain cut in from the right, dancing past several players before passing the ball smoothly to the former Manchester United striker in the box. However, poor Welbz miskicked the ball, allowing it to skid off to Alexandre Lacazette behind him.
Arsenal’s record signing made no mistake in slotting the ball neatly home, giving the Gunners a goal, the ex-Lyon star his second of pre-season, and Welbz an ‘assist’, which wasn’t really meant to be an assist.
Here’s a rather amusing ‘compilation’ of 26-year-old’s best ‘assists’.
Danny Welbeck’s vision is in 3074 while we’re all in 2017. Unreal assists. pic.twitter.com/RWGfXzO5Bn
— Mike Sanz (@mikesanz19) August 1, 2017
Last season, Welbz scored five goals and assisted four over 22 appearances in all competitions. However, while he had 85% pass accuracy during his limited time on the pitch in the Premier League, his shot accuracy was only 50%.
Both goals he scored in the league were well inside the penalty box, almost in the goal area.
During the 2015/16, although he only had the chance to feature 11 times in the Premiership due to injury, he scored four times. Once again, all of these were only a few yards out.
None of his Premier League goals over the past couple of years have come from anywhere close to outside the box.
Welbz is also strong in the air, giving him even more reason to hang around in the penalty area. In fact, the England international won 48% of aerial duels last season. 4% more than Olivier Giroud, who’s three inches taller. However, Giroud obviously has a higher shot accuracy than Welbz (59%).
Given Welbz’s preference to scoring from close range, in the air or otherwise, this indicates that more often than not, when Arsenal are on the attack, he’ll be in the box. However, combine this with his lack of ‘potency’ when he’s in front of goal, and this often leads to him miskicking the ball, which will then either land to someone else to slot home (‘assist’), get saved, or skid off out of play.
It shows that he’s getting in the right positions for his strengths but he clearly needs to work on his shooting.