Of all the kids groomed by Arsene Wenger, Aaron Ramsey was the brightest of all after Cesc Fabregas but somehow his career has taken a downhill path ever since that horrific injury.
Ramsey was indeed the brightest kid when he joined Arsenal in 2008 at the tender age 17. The North London club paid £4.8m for him and Wenger rated him very highly.
It was all going so smooth for the young kid. In his second season, he made 29 total appearances and was steadily on his way in achieving brighter things for himself and for the club.
In 2010, at Britannia, he suffered an atrocious tackle from Ryan Shawcross that caused a double farcture in his lower leg. Well, Ramsey recovered after few months but he was never the same player again.
Last season he started well (made 34 appearances in the league) and played a pivotal role alongside Mikel Arteta. He took the responsibility of filling up the void left by then skipper Cesc Fabregas and did brilliantly.
This season, he has only made 11 starts in the league while 13 appearances have come as a substitute. He has been deployed in various positions and is seen now as mainly a squad player.
He is only 22 and has the age on his side but is his talent being wasted by the club? His development was rocked by injury but post recovery, has been taken well care of?
Ramsey is the weakest player in the squad by far. I hate to see him playing for Arsenal team anytime.
No, Arsenal isn’t wasting Aaron Ramsey’s talent, but Ramsey, himself, may be.
There are two obvious reasons why Ramsey isn’t getting the same amount of playing time as he was previously: 1.) he dwells on the ball and looks to back-pass a lot more than he did pre-injury; and 2.) with only a few exceptions, he has been attrocious defensively, with serious lapses, especially when playing further forward. The first of these problems has contributed to making the second liability even worse.
Pre-injury, Ramsey would look to make the incisive pass forward upon receiving the ball, much as Jack Wilshere does now. But, since his injury, he has been tentative in this regard, holding onto the ball until the opening for the pass has closed, then circling with it and passing it backwards or laterally. While he will make the occasional quick run without the ball, when he receives the ball in a play-making position, he has been too hesitant in his decision-making. What good is there to asking a player to be a play-maker when he is too hesitant to make plays for you? In this regard, Wilshere and Cazorla are miles ahead of Ramsey at this stage.
Worse yet, by being hesitant and dwelling on the ball when playing forward, Ramsey has left himself open to being dispossessed in situations where the opposition can launch a counterattack. One of the biggest problems with the Arsenal defense is that they are vulnerable to counterattacks. One of the reasons that they are so vulnerable–in addition to the fact that Mertesacker is neither fast nor quick and Vermaelen likes to get too far forward at times–is that they get little cover from their midfielders, particularly when one of the fullbacks goes forward. In these situations, the midfielders have to keep in mind that they have defensive responsibilities and be prepared to get back quickly on defense. Here is where Ramsey is particularly lacking.
While Diaby dwells on the ball and turns it over in bad positions even more than Ramsey, Diaby will commit a foul to prevent a counterattack if he can and, for as slow as he will run back at times, Diaby will sprint back when he sees that cover is needed. Except for during this recent stretch when he was playing further back in place of Arteta, Ramsey has not always been running back hard to help his defense when Arsenal has been caught on the break. There have been times in more than a few matches where Ramsey has been caught and passed by opponents sprinting past him as he jogged back to his own end. That is unacceptable. Particularly on a club where the back four isn’t the most solid to begin with. You don’t see that from Wilshere. And, while it’s true that Ramsey isn’t that fast, Arteta isn’t fast either. But, Wilshere, Arteta and even Diaby and Rosicky are more consistently aware of their defensive responsibilities and hustle back on defense more consistently than Ramsey.
Only Santi Cazorla is more of a defensive liability than Ramsey and Cazorla offsets that by being a much more dangerous playmaker in the offensive end.
Now, I will grant the fact that Ramsey has been better defensively of late and he offers more defensively than Theo Walcott or Cazorla, if only because he is bigger and a bit more willing to put a foot in, and Oxlaide-Chamberlain, who lacks Ramsey’s experience. But, why should Arsene Wenger give Ramsey more playing time when, at present, he has better options?
Pre-injury Ramsey showed that he has talent. But he now has to earn whatever playing time he gets beyond what is handed to him as a result of injuries to other players. And, to do that he’s going to have to prove that he can still be the playmaker that he was pre-injury and that he’s not going to cost the club points by being the kind of defensive liability that he has been until recently. While Wenger can help him by letting him spell Arteta a bit more–which seems to be a position better suited to Ramsey’s current abilities, it’s going to be up to Ramsey to prove that he deserves the playing time and is not wasting his own talent. Playing defense, like switching quickly from attack to defense or making a pass as soon as you see the opening without hesitation, is mental, a state of mind. Which means that correcting these deficiencies is possible: it is not an issue of lacking the basic talent to do so. But, that also means that it is on Ramsey, himself, to make those corrections internally if he wants his career to progress as it should.
However, Ramsey is going to have to make these corrections quickly because, with Arsene Wenger under a lot of pressure to produce results, Wenger is going to be bringing in players with talent and pedigree over the summer to bolster the club and those players are going to be looking to get significant playing time. If he isn’t ready to offer more on the pitch than he has this season, Ramsey is going to slip further down the depth chart and get even less playing time than he has been getting thus far. And, he will have only himself to blame for that.