Aaron Ramsey set to leave after club withdraws contract offer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45663651

Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey is likely to leave the club next summer after the Gunners withdrew a contract offer.

A new four-year deal was agreed but Arsenal then decided they could not proceed with it.

When contacted by BBC Sport, neither party would say why the deal collapsed.

Ramsey's existing contract expires on 30 June 2019 which means the 27-year-old will become a free agent next summer - unless he is sold in January.

As things stand, the Welshman will also have the option of signing a pre-contract agreement with a foreign club from 1 January.

Ramsey joined the Gunners in 2008 in a £4.8m move from hometown club Cardiff City.

He is Arsenal's longest-serving player and scored the winning goals in the 2014 and 2017 FA Cup finals.

Ramsey was an 84th-minute substitute in the Gunners' 3-1 defeat of Brentford in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday.

What on earth happened? The four year deal was agreed then withdrawn by the club? Did Ramsey refuse to eat Emery's celebratory seafood paella?

 

Honestly not at all bothered.

Ramsey is a very average player, he never became great at anything. I am not sure he would get in any of the other top 6 sides starting 11.

Ramsey (like wilshere, ox, Walcott) is one word - replaceable. I am much more excited about seeing who comes in than sad at Ramsey leaving.

Too many Wenger players that stuck around for too long without actually improving.

 

Getting rid of deadwood. Good.

Sends a message we don't retain rubbish any more

 

All depends what we replace him with.....

Saying he is deadwood and rubbish is very harsh. There are not many CM that contributes with so many assist and goals like Ramsey.

 

All I can say is goodbye and good luck.
Thanks for the memories but he certainly won't be missed.

 

His statistics will be impressive for sure, but I can counterbalance this argument by saying that the way he plays slows us down and disrupts our attack. He's been very mediocre this season and although it's not entirely his fault that Emery has placed him in several different positions, his general passing, shooting, vision and dribbling have been well below par. He's lost the ball in key areas and hasn't kept his composure in the final third. It may not be that noticeable because it hasn't cost us in any of our last 6 games, but what is noticeable is that he's been one of our poorer performers.

I wouldn't call him rubbish, but he's equally not at the level he seems to think he's at. He's been okay without being outstanding for the last 3 years. And performing at an 'okay' level isn't enough to warrant a substantial reward in contractual terms.

 

Bit gutted to be honest, he's been a great servant for the club and he's scored some important goals. That said I think his best for us was when he linked up with Giroud running into the box from Midfield. He was a dangerous player then and scored lots of goals from midfield. Since then he's not really offered all that much, and as Brunel says he slows our attack down in midfield and allows the opposition to regroup.

Hope we sell him in January as I don't want to lose him on a free. But I don't think we'll get more than about £15m for him, and there should be a host of clubs who'd be interested in him tbh. Also think we'll move for Eva Banega again to replace him, who is more of an attacking midfielder and even at 30 years old should offer a bit more urgency going forward.

 

An update that I saw from Ornstein is that we'd, in principle, agreed a 4 year deal with him. He was set to sign the new contract. But then we withdrew the offer. Yet no reason is mentioned as to why we did this.

Would love an explanation for that one.

 

The question is, are we likely to get some dosh for him in the January window? I'd take 10 mill and give him a handshake!

 

Nah, come on. £10m is absolutely derisory. That would probably get you a footballer's leg in this day and age.

If we don't receive anything above £20m, then we may as well keep him until his contract expires.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why the club took the deal off the table. Seems very peculiar.

 

Yeah, not sure what's happened there. Club obviously wanted him to stay and offered him a contract. I can only presume that his agent was pushing for something unrealistic and the club have called his bluff and said take it or leave it.

If that's the case, then it shows strength from the club not be be held to ransom by players.

 

What I will say is the timing of this news isn't ideal at all.

At the very least, he is going to be here until January. The fans may get on his case and give him a slightly cold reception whenever he does play from now until Jan. Not sure how this will affect the dressing room too with the players knowing that he'll be gone soon. Will Ramsey be a negative influence on the other players? And if Ramsey does get a decent amount of minutes on the pitch, will he even be motivated to perform? Because regardless of if he performs or not, he knows he won't be here at some point in 2019.

I just pray this news won't destabilise us. We've had 6 wins in a row, the last thing we need is something off the field to distract us from what we do on it.

 

two things have happened in the past week:
1.) Gazidis has left
2.) Kroenke is now 100% owner of the club.

I wonder if either of those two things played a part in it.

 

I'm with you on this, it does come across as a bit peculiar and an explanation would be good considering he's been with us for so long. But at the end of the day, it's better he goes than stays if Emery thinks he doesn't fit, but i do hope it was Emery's decision due to him not being suitable for his system.

 

I'm only saying 10mill because he'll only have 6 months left on his contract..I agree he's probably worth 20-25mill in this crazy market (given 1 plus years left on his contract under normal circumstances).

 

10 years ago maybe. He's worth £40-50m in todays market for sure. (In fact United offered us 50m in the Summer)

I'll expect we will get 20-25m in January.

 

Soo we know.

• There has been an offer on the table for a while
• Ramsey appaers to have been after a bigger salary (some sources claiming he feels he deserves the same money as Ozil)
• Arsenal took the offer off the table.

We can speculate that Emery is less high on Ramsey after working with him for the last couple of months.
I suppose its possible that Arsenal return with another offer but it does seem like Ramsey will be leaving us in January or the Summer window.

If he does leave I hope we sell him abroard rather than let him go to Chelsea/United.

 

Hmm. Not sure "Suddenly withdrew the contract" is accurate. Could easily be, we got the story about the contract being ready and don't want to admit it, because our reputation for being ITK might be tarnished. Or it may just be sheer arrogance in the sources not believing that they might have got something wrong.

Or it may just have been that Ramsey hasn't been setting the pitch alight this season. He has been playing at #10 instead of Ozil and quit frankly hasn't been that much better defensively. It will be interesting to see if Ozil goes back to #10 and Ramsey gets benched a bit for Torreira and Mihky. We are pretty well served with Midfielders right now.

I know there are a lot of players that don't love Xhaka and Elneny but at the end of the day they are not a huge downgrade on Ramsey the way he is playing right now. On top of that you have a number of players like smith-Rowe and Nelson coming through that are not far behind him and have more future potential, not to mention being a lot less expensive.

On balance, being the businessmen they are, without sentiment, it isn't an unreasonable decision.

 

I can't really argue with that, we are well stocked with midfielders and Ramsey hasn't been tearing up trees recently to justify a bumper new pay package. Our new transfer team could probably get someone as good for less abroad.

 

Source?

No club in their right mind would pay £40-50m for Ramsay when he's so average. In the same way no club in their right mind would pay that much for someone like Henderson who is also bang average, but probably better than Ramsay.