The plot thickens as it is revealed by Roy Hodgson that the Arsenal striker Danny Welbeck is expected to be out of action for the next six months, after the Gunners were a little vaguer on how long in their official announcement. Welbeck had already been out of action since April when Arsenal.com revealed that he needed another operation on his knee.
The report said: “It had been hoped he would avoid surgery but after increasing his training workload, the injury to his cartilage did not respond as well as hoped and the decision was taken last week for him to undergo surgery by a leading specialist in the field.
“Danny is now expected to be out for a period of months and everyone at Arsenal wishes him well.”
Now the England manager Roy Hodgson has admitted that he is not confident that Welbeck will be available for the Euros if his injury does not heal by the end of the season. Hodgson said: ‘Welbeck bothers me now. He has already been out for me since March and for Arsenal since April. And now I hear it’s another six months so I can only hope that Danny recovers a bit quicker and then hits the ground running.
‘Daniel (Sturridge) is a little bit the same. It’s getting on for a year now. They are always in my thoughts because I think they’re very good players and they did extremely well when they were playing. But we can’t keep going around talking about the ones who aren’t there.
‘We’ve got to be quite sanguine about it and we mustn’t start thinking, “When this one comes back, we’ll be better still”. We can’t do that. We’ve got to make sure we’re good with the ones who are playing.’
It is well-known that Hodgson and Wenger keep each other informed about Arsenal’s English contingent, so if Arsene has told the England boss that Welbeck could miss the rest of the season then Le Prof’s failure to bring in another striker is now looking even more risky. If Walcott doesn’t cut it as centre-forward then we may have to keep Olivier Giroud as fit as a fiddle all season….