Boredom won’t settle in for Welbeck, who is well used to alone time
Danny Welbeck spent enough time cooped up through injury that talk of boredom setting in at England’s remote World Cup base is immediately laughed off.
Manager Gareth Southgate’s squad head to Russia today as the next phase of World Cup preparations gets under way at their team base in Repino.
Around 45 minutes away from the nearest city of St Petersburg, there have been questions about the suitability of the quiet area for players during the World Cup.
England’s much-maligned Rustenberg base in 2010 has been mentioned in the same breath, but Southgate gave short shrift to talk of boredom, calling it “sad, nonsense and a big red herring”.
Welbeck echoed those sentiments ahead of the team heading east, with injury problems of recent years giving him a philosophical outlook. “For me, nothing like that seems to bother me,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve had surgery and then not been allowed to put weight on my leg for two months, so I’ve been stuck in a room and that sort of stuff.
“I don’t get bored now. I’ve been through that. I know what I can do to occupy myself, occupy my brain.
“If I am on my own, I like my own company [laughs] after that, so I am cool. That sort of stuff won’t really bother me.”
Welbeck’s approach is shaped by the eight-month injury lay-off that forced him to miss Euro 2016 and has disrupted his time at Arsenal, where he has had niggling issues since recovering from that knee complaint.
“Obviously as soon as you have the injury, you’re not in a happy place at all,” the 27-year-old said. “You know once you’ve had the surgery, you’re going to be out for a certain period of time. It’s frustrating.
“I missed the last Euros and you miss however many months of the Premier League season and that’s the one thing you want to do as a footballer – you want to be playing football on the football pitch and enjoying playing the game that you love.
“When you get an injury, that takes it away from you but there’s things that you can do to try to take it in a positive way, however hard it may be.
“You might not be able to play but you still learn mentally and that sort of thing.
“At the end of the day, you’ve still got that hunger and desire to get back out on the pitch and that’s what will drive you on.”