Danny Welbeck says knowing Arsenal’s England internationals made his move to London an “easy” decision.
The 24-year-old forward joined the Gunners from Manchester United in September 2014, having made 142 appearances for his boyhood club.
Welbeck had lived in Longsight for his whole life but says knowing Jack Wilshere, Kieran Gibbs, Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Calum Chambers helped him make the difficult move away from his hometown.
“It makes it easier for you because, like any situation in life, if you go somewhere and see a familiar face then you can obviously bond with them,” he told the Arsenal Weekly podcast.
“Knowing the England boys from international duty and growing up with them in the youth teams made it easy. They integrate you into the group a lot easier with the other lads as well.
“It was a new challenge but it was an exciting time for me to approach a new situation, move from Manchester to London and all of the stuff that goes with it.
"It was a whole new city, not completely new as I’d been to London before, but it was weird knowing that I was going to be calling London home and not Manchester.
“The thing that you miss the most is your family and that’s the most important thing. A lot of my family and friends do come to London to see me anyway. They come to all the home games so I get to see them quite a lot anyway.
"But I was leaving something that I knew after growing up in Manchester, coming to a new city, it’s an exciting period.”
Danny Welbeck
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
