Please, stop your blind defence of this mediocre player. At the moment he is not good enough for Arsenal. it really is as simple as that. By persevering with these 'maybe one day' players while our rivals strengthen significantly, we will find ourselves in a perpetual limbo between failure and success where the only 'trophy' will be CL qualification every season (best case scenario). I for one am sick of it. The solution is to send him out loan (Bolton?) and see what he's made of, if he cuts the mustard and shows his class, then maybe bring him back, if not get rid. In the meantime for once we should use his squad number on established talent, a player who has already proved himself in the game. We never push on and make ambitious moves, we always seem to just 'get by' on the minimum of resources and it always comes back to bite us on the arse. No more of this.
You can't blame Arsenal's failings on one player. He is a talented player that is going through a bad patch. I agree that he shouldn't be first choice at the moment as he's off form. He should be sub at the moment until he picks up the rhythm of our game. But there is not much you can do when you have injuries and Benny unable to play. Diaby, Benny and Coqs are back for next game so Ramsey will probably be benched. I would still bring him on as sub to keep him regular.....
Cliche but: "even a broken clock is right twice a day". The guy isn't good enough for Arsenal FC. He just isn't, he has had so many chances to prove otherwise. When a player from a mid-table club (no offense to Arteta, he's been great) comes in at Arsenal and makes the CM position his own, with 0 contest, that has to tell you something about Ramsey. Not long ago we looked at him to replace Fabregas.
But that tells you everything doesn't it? That all of us would prefer a 32 year-old loanee to start off-position instead of the 21 y/o who's been at our club for 4 years?
Ammaar, I agree with this - I think a spell at Bolton might help Ramsey (even if Bolton go down). It worked for Wilshere - he came back a lot tougher and stronger in possession. Maybe some of that had to do with him just growing up a bit, but I tend to think the experience helped him. Ramsey has an issue with his strength and pace. He needs to work on holding players off and protecting the ball as well as getting quicker (which is possible with training). In terms of yesterday, his pass to RVP was no moment of brilliance, it was a good pass that you see week in week out in almost every match. He didn't play well at all yesterday, and hasn't stood out all season. Against Stoke, I am really hoping we start Coquelin in midfield along side Song, with Rosicky further forward. Given what happened to Spurs yesterday, we need 6 points from 9 to ensure another St Totteringhams Day and a place in the top 4 (unless Spurs get 12 points from 12 AND win by a few goals to close the GD). Lets do it in the next 2 games and not go to the last day! 6 points would also mean that the Toon would need 10 from 12 to overtake us.
I agree with everyone that Ramsey shouldn't be playing at the moment, but we are having issues with our midfield at the moment. I wouln't get rid of Ramsey as i think he's class and he's still only 21! His kind of players tend to mature later. Saying that, no we shouldn't keep him on the bench or play him because of this potential, but it should be based on form. As a few have said, he should go out on loan next season as he may struggle to get into the first team and regular football is important to Ramsey's development. Next year our midfield will comprise of Wilshere, Rosicky, Arteta, OXO, Diaby (injury permitting), Coqs and Song. Also there is a possibility of Wenger buying a new midfielder and Frimpong will hopefully come back too. That's why a good full season loan for Ramsey would be the best solution, unless he comes back as pre-injury Ramsey....
There is a lot of talk about pre-injury Ramsey. In fact back then he was still only a player with potential. But there was a key difference in his play. Ramsey lost possession ZERO times in 7 starts and 11 sub appearances in 2009/10 before his injury. That was the best in our team, and he's gone to being the worst in the team this year. I am not sure why he has become so indecisive and error prone - is it that he just dwells too long on the ball? Is he scared of holding players off in case he takes another bad tackle? Is he just too slow now after his injury and cant get to the ball quick enough to shield it? He needs to take a long hard look at his game and man up. We need him now.
I don't know what the solution is, I'd hate to lose him because I think he has big potential, I maybe think the way we play isn't allowing him to play his game. Were we playing 4-3-3 when he got injured ? I don't remember, but maybe if he had someone properly defensive next to him he could play his natural game, I think he has buckets to offer us offensively. This is again the reason I see Song as a problem for us - he offers little offensively and defensively - Ramsey potentially offers a lot more offensively especially with long range shooting with either foot.
Interesting - we were actually playing a 442 back then I believe.... Good info here: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/389636-why-arsenals-switch-to-a-4-3-3-has-produced-mixed-results
How many forward passes, how many through balls how many short passes, how many long passes. Your stats are completely irrelevant.
Actually they are not irrelevant - but you seem to want to believe they are. How do your questions relate to the other possession lost information like loss of control and being tackled??? - They dont, do they? I do some research and provide insight and all you can do is come up with a lame one liner. For reference though I have already posted on through balls and short passes/long passes/ forward passes and backwards/ sideways passes. Post 70 here for a pretty complete analysis: http://www.not606.com/showthread.php/137367-Scapegoating-our-players/page4 You can also go here for more, where you will find long pass/short pass breakdowns: http://www.whoscored.com/ If you are too lazy to do any research, Ramsey has 94/123 long passing, Song has 94/139. Ramsey has 0.2 Through balls per game, Song has 0.7. So as i said, Ramsey loses possession more through poor control and getting robbed of the ball, but less so than Song through poor passes. some of us do our research - others try to deny it. Perhaps because it was I who posted you felt the need to jump in with a silly statement Statistics can never tell the whole story, but they are used extensively by top managers, with Wenger being the pioneer in this country. Perhaps his approach is "completely irrelevant"?
So Song losses possession sometimes when passing because he plays more of the difficult and potentially game changing passes. Fair enough. I'm surprised that you are prepared to slate Song so much but effectively defend Ramsey, its been clear to see that he has been awful for quite a while now. And I'm not saying that because I have any kind of problem with him, I really hope he can recover his form and develop at the rate he was pre-Shawcross, but its plain to see he is a liability at the moment.
TopGun you have not followed the thread here! I am saying Song is by far the better player this year - and have done consistently. Ramsey loses possession by being dispossessed or poor control more than twice as much as Song per game. I had to post those stats in response to some stupid scouser who had just made up some figures on Song giving the ball away more than Ramsey vs Chelsea - which he did not.
Apologies Jayram, I havent read all through the thread only the later posts in between watching United murder Everton. They have collapsed in a Spursesque fashion second half
with help again from the ref. they made it 2-1 whilst an Everton defender was down injured. They played on for 30 seconds, took advantage of the space and scored.
They got 5 min extra time for nothing. Still 4 - 4 though, nice job by Everton. The Manchester derby will be interesting.
From the article: We are not defending from the top down. What i mean by that is for the 4-3-3 formation to be very effective, we need to defend from the striker down to the goalkeeper. We did this during the 6-1 mauling of Everton and havenât that again during the season. Some of it, is players coming in and out of the squad during to injury, but we just seem to have lost interest in doing that anymore. When you go back and watch that game you will see what I mean, when our players lost the ball, Van Persie, Bendtner, and Arshavin would press the ball to allow our overlapping full-backs to get back in defence. We seem to have lost this basic art of defending from the top down over the course of the league season and itâs something the manager must address. This is our main problem. It's funny that this was written back in 09/10 and it's still a problem now. It's taken Wenger how long to get another midfielder to balance our 4-3-3 (Arteta), and that's because we lost our 2 best mids! I remember we were interested in Arteta ages ago and he too wanted to come but we still didn't get him. These are mistakes made by our management.....
Jayram although your research attempts to dent my dislike of Song and like of Ramsey kudos for you doing it This is why I respect what you say more than others even though I don't agree with some of it. You aren't some dumbass who sits there just mudslinging, you actually attempt to bring something sensible to the table !!! You argue points like an adult too until provoked. However there is not a single thing that anyone can provide as proof to show Song's relevance in my eyes - I watch what games I can and I fail to be impressed by Song, the number of times, for example, Song gave away the ball in the second half contradicts what stats say, the number of times I "effed" and "blinded" because of his passing was ridiculous. I think we had better interchange of players before Ramsey's injury - Diaby, Rosicky, Fabregas, Nasri, Song. He could give the ball to Fabregas and Nasri and their movement and ability suited him, he was doing well in the 09/10 season. Nasri and Fabregas rarely lost the ball which helped us boss games.
Just as a matter of interest, how do you know Song isn't disciplined? How do you know he isn't doing exactly what he is being asked to do, with perfect discipline?
I think you're being a bit too harsh on Song. His performance overall was pretty good and i can see that he is developing well, but he did give the ball away on a few occasions, which led to dangerous counters. Had Chelsea been better on the day, they would have capitalised on them. If he continues his development and gets rid of these silly errors in his game, then he will become one of the best. But this is a big IF. To be the best you need to be consistent and to eliminate these type of errors in your game.
