Sir Alex Ferguson has a problem. He just has too many awesome forwards. He said as much last week, and that was before his team went and put up 8 on Arsenal, a tally high enough to beat most Big Ten football teams.
It almost sounds like some sort of clever prank, like a viral marketing campaign sure to reveal some sort of punch line sooner or later. Side after side in the EPL need forwards. Arsene Wenger would probably swear off puffy jackets for good to get someone in the squad to complement Robin van Persie. Stoke and Fulham don’t seem to even have any forwards on their roster. Swansea is yet to score in three matches.
Yet, there Ferguson’s side is, flush with top class forwards. There’s Wayne Rooney, who in addition to being one of the best attacking players of this era seems to be set on displaying an even higher work rate this season. He’s been partnered with Danny Welbeck for the first several games who has been fantastic.
Originally, Welbeck was a stand-in starter while Mexican superstar Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez recovered from a concussion he suffered during United’s preseason junket in the United States. Welbeck, though, changed the script, and played so splendidly before the international break that he’s kept Chicharito relegated to the bench.
Unfortunately for Welbeck and fans of exciting young forward play, the 20-year-old suffered an injury of his own, pulling up lame in the first half of United’s 8-2 romp (but not before getting his name on the scoresheet). Now it’s Welbeck who will be on the bench, recovering from a hamstring injury that should keep him out between a month and six weeks. This helps alleviate Sir Alex’s forward depth issue, though we haven’t even mentioned Dimitar Berbatov who only, you know, scored the most goals of any other player in the EPL last season and has made one cameo so far this campaign. Oh, and there’s also Mame Biram Diouf, Federico Macheda and Michael Owen.
Welbeck probably wasn’t long for the starting XI at any rate, but the injury is a shame for a young player who was making waves at the highest level. To add salt in the wound, Welbeck signaled to the bench he needed to come off or risk a hamstring injury. United wasn’t able to rush Hernandez in quickly enough, Ferguson said after the match.
Before the injury we saw a player who was working incredibly hard, throwing himself after every ball that came into his area. Welbeck plays like a center forward with the ability to hold up the ball and brush off defenders, but he also posses eyebrow-raising pace for a player with his strength.
He’s emblematic of the kind of players Fergie keeps bringing into Old Trafford. Like his midfielder teammate Tom Cleverley, Welbeck is a young English player United have homegrown and spurred onto greater growth by sending him on a loan spell with a lesser EPL club. In Welbeck’s case, Steve Bruce was hoping there’d be a chance to win his services back to Sunderland for another loan until this past weekend. And really, there was. As much as it might seem in jest, Ferguson really does have too many strikers, possessing 6 or 7 capable options before the Welbeck injury. Macheda is the prime suspect to end up out on loan with strong reserve performances lately.
Who knows? After a loan spell at a club like Sunderland (or Newcastle), he could another answer to United’s problem. Another gifted, young striker.