It’s easy to forget that Danny Welbeck has played 42 times for England and scored 16 times whilst doing so. Easy yes, but also entirely understandable to have forgotten that he used to be a regular England selection given how much injury has curtailed his career in recent years. In many ways, the frontman dropped off the footballing map due to lengthy spells on the treatment table and Brighton and Hove Albion fans will know all about that after a hamstring injury ruled him out for the first half of the 2021/2022 season.
When fit, however, Welbeck’s quality is still there for all to see which is why Brighton will have to decide whether to renew his contract when it expires in the summer. Given that he still has the ability to find the back of the net in the Premier League, you can understand why a host of clubs vying for promotion from the Championship are sniffing around him. Indeed, if you bet on Championship football matches then you’ll know that Fulham, Blackburn Rovers, and Bournemouth are the favourites for promotion to the Premier League and are exactly the type of clubs that wouldn’t think twice about offering him a deal to help them score the goals they will need to survive.
Welbeck has after all netted three times in nine games this season which included a spectacular header against Chelsea to earn a point in the dying embers of the Seagulls' Premier League encounter in west London. In many respects, that goal told you everything you needed to know about the 31-year-old’s ability to still be able to arrive in the right place at the right time and then execute a finish that any of the game’s best strikers would be proud of.
It’s also worth saying that not many forwards have been able to out-jump the world-class Antonio Rudiger or even given him the run around to the extent that Welbeck did on that evening at Stamford Bridge.
With this in mind, you would have to say that offering Welbeck a new deal would make sense, but then you also have to take into account that this is a footballer that could go down for months on end with injury and if it is just a 12-month extension, how prudent would it really be if Welbeck were to be injured for half of the time?
Of course, he may not return to the treatment table again for such a large amount of time but these types of decisions can only really be made by using past evidence to try and foresee the future.
When all is said and done, it may come down to the fact that Graham Potter is short of goals in general and in essence, can't afford to offload a player that is scoring with relative frequency. What’s more is that at a fraction under £3 million a season for Welbeck’s services, Brighton won’t in all likelihood be able to bring in a player for less that will return around 10 goals for the Seagulls per season.
In other words, extending Danny Welbeck’s contract is a gamble worth taking for Brighton.
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