Danny Welbeck scores hat trick, immediately gets compared to Thierry Henry

Danny Welbeck scored the first hat trick of his senior career against a team that completely forgot that defending is something you're allowed to do in the Champions League. Naturally, because the world is insane, this prompted comparisons to Arsenal's all-time leading scorer, Thierry Henry.

You can almost hear Henry asking "Are you actually comparing him to me ALREADY?!?!" in that picture. But it wasn't just the crackpots at fringe media outlet "The BBC" saying this. Everyone's favorite pundit, Gary Neville, thinks Welbeck "could emulate Henry." Even Arsene Wenger — the man who has coached both Henry and Welbeck (coming up on a whole month now!) — decided to contribute to the wildly inflated hype of a player who was roundly mocked as a striker incapable of scoring just a few weeks ago.

But when everything seems a bit sideways, you can always count on history to keep things in perspective. Before Welbeck, Arsenal had two players score hat tricks in the Champions League: The legendary Thierry Henry and drunken punchline Nicklas Bendtner.

So Welbeck's performance against Galatasaray means he will either be the next greatest striker in Arsenal's history, a bumbling failure whose pants fall down as he leaves nightclubs, or something in between those two polar opposites. Clearly that was £16 million well/terribly/adequately spent.

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Brooks Peck

is the editor of Dirty Tackle on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him or follow on Twitter! Follow @BrooksDT