All Hail Danny Welbeck, The Lord Of The Premier League

Spend enough time on the soccer side of social media and you're bound to come across one of those video-comp odes to the Barclaysman. As proud guy-rememberers ourselves, we of course do not begrudge the pleasant strolls down memory lane these highlight reels take you for, bathing nostalgic light on once beloved but semi-forgotten cult players, the ones who made the Premier League what it was back when the EPL was known as the BPL. But if it's worth singing the praises of yesterday's lesser nobility, then it's also worth giving props to the ones who are still kicking today. One such player deserving of some shine is Danny Welbeck, whose long career and his belated apex show just how major a minor legend can be. If it feels like Welbeck has been around forever, that's because he has. I'm unc enough to remember back in the Barclays days when the now-35-year-old was Manchester United's buzzy young hotshot, the latest exciting Carrington product from whom Alex Ferguson was sure to wring 20 goals a season in the coming years. Welbeck made his Premier League debut for United in November of 2008, about a week before his 18th birthday. But it wasn't until a few years later, in 2011, when he really announced himself as a potential force to be reckoned with. Coming into that 2011–12 season, on the heels of a solid loan campaign with Sunderland, Welbeck was well positioned to seize United's starting striker position, beating out the likes of Dimitar Berbatov and Javier Hernández for the right to take Wayne Rooney's hand in goaly matrimony. Welbeck performed the role respectably, scoring 12 goals across 39 appearances in all competitions in a season capped by United just getting pipped to the title by the famous Agüero goal. On their own, Welbeck's numbers weren't mindblowing, which explains United's addition of Robin van Persie the next summer, but his youth and the breadth of his skill set marked him as a serious talent we'd surely be hearing about for years to come. As it turned out, that both was and wasn't true.