Aaron Ramsey

The Ramsey-Arsenal connection that season was just a gold mine discovery for everybody concerned.

First he’d paid his dues with a consistent hard-working partnership with Arteta the six months beforehand.

Then he finds this perfect flow in his game within a team of thoroughly compatible players in Arteta, Özil, Cazorla and Giroud.

Once in a lifetime form in a system that made him THE main receiver.

Neither of those are likely to be the case ever again… so his willingness to adapt and develop his game last season on a tactical and disciplinary level are crucial signs something new might kick off with him here.

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Everybody has signed a new contract at this point, but Ramsey. Let’s stop the Wenger blame game for a minute here (never thought I would say that). It is Ramsey and his camp who are trying to sqeeuze every ounce they can get out of this club. If it’s true that he has received offers and not accepted one.

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True I suppose.

Fuck him off and go all-in on Kovacic now imo.

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You are seing the light :hearts:

Agreed. Our contract game was shit and fucked up, but sometimes a player just isn’t willing to sign at a certain point because they want to get to the point where their contract is running down and they can “hold their club to ransom” (transfer window cliche alert)

Sell and use the funds to finance a winger.

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Noooo FFS! He must stay!

I’m a fan of Ramsey but, were there a choice, I’d swap him out for a Cazorla type central / attacking midfielder provided we could identify a player of that ilk. That’s a big “if”, of course, because a Cazorla level midfielder would likely cost £50m+ and are in short supply / high demand.

Feel like to get the best out of Ramsey, you need to accommodate him a bit too much. If he’s pumping out 13/14 form then fine, but anything less than that (even his good form last season) and the aggregate loss / gain is probably in the negative when compared to the output of having a Cazorla level midfielder in there.

Basically, I miss Santi and our performances over the past 2 seasons have borne that out.

I’m curious to see how Emery deploys Ramsey, and which players are moved / dropped to fit him in the team. Perhaps the system utilised will mean we get a nice balance and less of “give Ramsey the keys to the team” type situation, which I fear will be the case if we give him 250 k/w wages + captaincy.

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It’s such a myth that our performances were different with Cazorla in the middle.

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Not really. Santi’s demise was the death of Wengerball.

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Arsenal has been slow and lethargic for 6 years. Wengerball died when Nasri and Fabregas left.

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I disagree. Wengerball been dead since the 2-1 with Barcelona at the Emerytes.

It was far less painful to watch.

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Care to expand and debunk this “myth” then?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our absolute worst years under Wenger coincided with Cazorla being injured for the vast majority of that period. I’d go as far as to say it was arguably the key contributing factor from a squad availability perspective.

He was our only press-resistant midfielder with genuine tactical intelligence in the middle of the pitch. Without him, we were simply incapable of playing the sort of football Wenger wanted us to.

Under Wenger, he was possibly our most important player. Now, it’s unclear whether Emery needs a similar player in his team, or whether Ramsey will be a better fit for the way he wants us to play.

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Years? You mean year. We got 75 points under Wenger in 16/17. Just because Liverpool finished above us that year it doesn’t mean it has been one of our absolute worst years. Other teams were just better. Our worst year, imo, was 15/16 in the grand scheme of things.

Arsenal had the same weaknesses from 12-15 when Cazorla was available. Going forward we were as uninspirational and had a hard time breaking team downs and as far as defending goes, counterattacks against other teams had been a problem since Wenger changed his system since 09/10. That includes the period Cazorla was here. Back then we had Fabregas and Nasri, RvP we have a lot of technical ability to at least play one-touch on high level in 09-11. But that was gone after they left and when the likes of Arteta, Gervinho/Podolski got into our midfield and forward positions.

Emery doesn’t need a type like Cazorla. It would help but his football doesn’t really need a high level of technic to be succesful.

Arsenal’s midfield has been a mess for the past 6-8 years. That wasn’t better with Cazorla.

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No, I mean years. I classify these past two seasons as the worst because we failed to finish in the top 4 and, for the first (and then second) time during Wenger’s tenure, there were 4/5 teams who finished above us.

Essentially, he (i) allowed other teams to overtake him whilst he did pretty much nothing to amend / evolve his philosophy / tactics; (ii) oversaw the continued stagnation of the squad he had built whilst simultaneously failing to address key deficiencies in said squad; and (iii) ultimately finished in the worst league position(s) of his Arsenal career due to his increasingly ineffective / obsolete [everything]. This leads me to the conclusion that they were his worst years.

I’m not arguing we weren’t a mess from 12-15, or that there was a better technical level when we had RvP, Cesc etc. You seem to be either stating that in response to somebody else’s point, or are wanting to argue that point with me?

I’m simply stating that when he was fit, he was the one player who managed to paper over the cracks of Wenger’s poor system, and that we missed him greatly. I shudder to think how much sooner this decline would have happened without him.

Whether a Ramsey type or Cazorla type is more effective in an Emery side is the question, and we will soon see how that all pans out. You’ve seen more of Emery than I have, so I’ll take your word for it that it doesn’t need a high technical level to succeed.

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Arsenal have performed relatively stable for several years performance-wise and result-wise, 70-75 points every season between 11/12 and 16/17, and had one season were they absolutely fell through the bottom limit. Which cost him his job.

During that stretch I mentioned Arsenal had the same weaknesses. Like i said defending against counterattacks, breaking teams down who put up a wall, just a complete lack of balance/midfield. We have had the exact same deficiencies for a period of 6 to 8 years and that includes the period Cazorla was relevant for us.

Cazorla didn’t cover any cracks, teams caught up. That has been the problem, not the absence of Cazorla. The bad league positions could have happened a lot sooner if Tottenham or Liverpool weren’t such fuck ups before Pochettino or Klopp.

Can’t agree with that.

Of course there was a base level of shit as there has been since 2012, but in 15-16 the difference with, or without Santi was ridiculously stark.

With him you see us play City off the park and top the league in December.

Without him we lose to the Man United U-18s and Swansea playing some of the most cancerous stuff I have ever seen, and switch many of us to WengerOut.

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