Dembele is a mile better than Ramsey. The only thing hindering Chelsea is a manager and dressing room unrest featuring JT. Mata and Hazard are much better than many of our players. If you can't see any of those points then I'm lost for words.
Mata and Hazard are quality, no debate about that in my book. Chelsea have struggled because they sold Drogba and Torres has been ****. Terry and Lampard are nearly finished too, and the whole Rafa debacle has been a self inflicted thorn in their side, but Chelsea have good players. Dembele is a good player, Sandro not for me. The problem spurs have is that they have **** all quality through their squad when their key players are injured.
Also, to fully reply... It's not about us competing favorably with Spurs and Chelsea. They're so far behind United too so beating them doesn't bring much credit with it. Ramsey might get us competing with teams 20 points behind the league leaders, but he gets us nowhere near the top of the league. He's one of our weakest first XI players... Dembele is one of Spurs' strongest... It would be logical to suggest swapping them would make us better. And your comment about 'if Mata and Hazard were so much better, Chelsea would be much further ahead' is also illogical as it doesn't take into account any other players or the manager's effect (important in Chelsea situation). Our semi-current central midfield with Ramsey in it is the weakest Arsenal central midfield since the mid 90's. It's just fortunate for us we have Wilshere and Carzorla to bring some quality centrally otherwise we'd be phucked.
Mata is top quality, Hazard reminds me too much of Nani, fantastic when he turns up ****e most of the time. Both Chelsea and Spurs are lacking a proficiant striker if both had one they would be challenging for the title.
For me, I think everybody can agree that Mata and players like him are decent, but there are quite a lot like him. Silva, Cazorla etc are much the same, each of us will have our favorites. What makes football interesting though is that a team (or even an attack) made up entirely of Matas would not perform well. Even 2 or 3 Matas would be too much. So you need other players as well, less flamboyant, less easy to pick out. That is when it becomes more tricky and when the arguments start.
Anyone who says Mata is only decent clearly is on crack. He's been a 1 man team this season, he was class for Valencia, and he's been top drawer for the Chavs this season.
Well, again it is all opinion. If you look on whoscored he isn't rated above Cazorla or Hazard. What is "obvious" to one person isn't obvious to another. He seems to have a very high rate of turnovers and is dispossessed a lot. I don't really watch Chelsea that much, but perhaps he is one of those players that if he is tightly marked you can keep him out of the game? I don't really know, but I do think familiarity breeds contempt. We don't rate our own players as highly as other team's players. Cazorla, for example, would appear to be better than Mata, by any objective rating system.
Your argument falls flat on it's face the moment you start it. Going by ratings on some site is stupid. Stats can be used to misinterpret and manipulate. The trick is to actually watch matches, you see who's good and who's bad by watching football. I always use the same argument. Statistically, Swansea's Leon Britton was better than Xavi last season, but we all know who the world class player is and who the glorified league 2 player is. I've just looked on this whoscored, and would you really say that Andy Carroll is better than Theo Walcott, because their "stats" seem to think so.
Well lets see what TT's beloved stat site says. According to whoscored, Ramsey is the 158th best player in the league.
First up, in his new DMC position he gets a 6.9 which would put him at 111 and above Oscar, but having said that I'm not sure that I accept their rating as an overall measure of a player, any more than you do, but I am just pointing out that there are many measures of a player other than opinion. I was surprised to see Hazard come out on top of Mata too, but it wouldn't surprise me now if a Chelsea fan said that Hazard was better than Mata. I don't believe that you have watched all 90 minutes of all of every other team's games this year like you probably have Arsenal's. If you are just watching the highlights you will not have seen Mata give the ball away or misplace a pass like you would have all the Arsenal players, so I don't think it is fair to say that you have the same information to judge other team's players against ours fairly. Yes, I think you can have a general impression but making a judgement call between Mata/Silva/Cazorla, no way. Sames holds true when judging Ramsey against Dembele, can't be done fairly.
That's because other people's players are better than our players. Aside from Cazorla, Wilshere, Koscielny and Rosicky (yes, really), could you see any other player of ours playing for another top 4 side?
Easily. You'd rather take Walker and BAE over our fullbacks? Lennon over Walcott? Defoe over Giroud? Once you start watching other teams for 90 mins every week you see their players making mistakes that they don't show on Motd. Dembele for example got outclassed against Basel and got replaced by Carroll after only 59 minutes.
Sagna - on current form, no Jenkinson - not yet Gibbs - no chance Monreal - not settled yet Arteta - wouldn't be as good elsewhere Oxo - doesn't play for us, so won't play for a top 4 rival Theo - god no. I think others would have more sense.
Ramsey has put in another decent shift today. Its only in the last month or two hes really turned the corner and is now becoming an important player for us. Your ratings site whoscored only shows the season as a whole so it really doesn't take account of Ramseys improvement. Today against Norwich he was driving the team forward from the back in the way I normally expect Wilshere to and Arteta before his recent drop in form going forward.
Surprised me too. Usually he plays to ball to the guy who makes the forward runs, but today he was the one making those runs.
