Welbeck proud to be an Albion leader

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Nick Szczepanik

2025-02-27T06:00+00:00

Danny Welbeck has scored 30 Premier League goals for Albion. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

Danny Welbeck is enjoying playing alongside Albion’s young attacking players and relishes his role as an elder statesman within the club.

And after coming off the bench to score the winning goal against Bournemouth he praised the assist from Georginio Rutter and revealed that he was always confident that he could find the net if he got the right pass.

“I’ve got a good connection with Georgi and with all the front players. When he picked up the ball in the middle, I knew what I wanted to do and I think he knew what I wanted to do too. So it was nice to get on the end of it and put it in the back of the net.

“When I took the touch I knew that if I took the shot early it would catch the keeper off-guard and I wanted to hit that far corner. In off the post and it was nice finish.

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Joao Pedro gave Albion a well deserved half-time lead, after scoring from the penalty spot. Despite Bournemouth levelling the score through Justin Kluivert, it was second half substitution Danny Welbeck who sealed all three points for Fabian Hurzeler, lifting Albion to eighth in the Premier League. Club photographers Paul Hazlewood and James Boardman were at the Amex to capture all the action.

“It’s very exciting to be playing in this Brighton side. We’ve got some amazing players, young players as well, that are adapting to the league, adapting to the intensity, a lot of players with special attributes.

“For me, being a senior member of the squad, I want to help them, give them advice. I’ve got invaluable experience and I’m happy to pass that on to the younger boys, wanting them to improve. It’s been going well. There’s a lot more to come from us, there’s a lot more to give. We’ve set the standards and we want to build on this now.

“It was a good team performance; it was gritty, we had to really knuckle down, work our socks off, stick together up against a tough side in Bournemouth. But we got the three points and that was the most important thing.”

Danny is playing for his third permanent Albion manager since joining the club in October 2020, and he is enjoying working under Fabian Hurzeler. “He’s very good. I feel like it’s difficult going through a transition period, new manager, new teammates, everybody getting used to it but we’ve got a good culture in the dressing room, good environment, good facilities at the training ground and everybody works hard every single day.

“We want to improve, the manager expects that from us, pushes us to our limits every day to get better and better and he’s always motivating us to be better each day.”

And how long can Danny, 34, continue to push himself?

“As long as I feel good, that’s how long I’ll go,” he said. “If I feel good and I feel I can impact games, I’ll just keep on going. Obviously at this moment in time I’m not thinking of anything other than football and that’s important for me, just to focus on the next games.

“I think I’ve got good genes! I work hard to keep myself in top condition and yes, I’m feeling fit and strong. I had a little knock at the weekend that kept me out of the game but I’ve recovered well and I’m good to go again.”

And, like the head coach, he is reluctant to look too far ahead, even though pundits are talking about Europe. “It’s important for us in our group that we don’t look too far ahead,” he said. “I feel like we’ve done that before and we’ve maybe derailed and started getting distracted. We’ve just got to focus on the next game, control what we can control and we go from there.”