Danny Welbeck has scored as many goals as Chris Smalling this season, but when he returned to Old Trafford with his new club, he scored and celebrated wildly.
When you consider that Cristiano Ronaldo faced United a couple of years earlier, a club he had played six seasons for, and refused to celebrate, it shows Welbeck up. The Longsight lad grew up supporting United and had been at the club since he was a child.
After the game he revealed he found it hard to knock United out as he was still a United fan, while Per Mertesacker claimed that Welbeck didn’t join in with the post-match celebrations in the dressing room as he was “hurting”.
Welbeck has today expanded on what it was like playing against United.
It was a weird occasion for me going to back to Old Trafford on the away side. The weirdest thing was warming up on the other side of the pitch. It just felt a bit weird. But you have to treat it like it’s any other game and play the game, not the occasion. Obviously I was going back to a club that brought me up and going back to the fans that supported me for years, playing against old team-mates, my old friends, it was a weird occasion. But I scored the goal, a big goal to get us through to the semi-final. So it was a spur of the moment to celebrate. Leading up to the game I had no plans [to celebrate] whatsoever. I just wanted to play the game, get it over and done with and get through to Wembley and get to the semi-final. That’s what happened. I scored the goal and whatever I did I would have been criticised – criticised if I celebrated or criticised if I didn’t. It was just spur of the moment.
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