Gunners boss urges ace Aaron to fight for place
UNAI EMERY has ordered Aaron Ramsey to forget about his contract stand-off and focus on getting back into his Arsenal team.
Emery revealed Ramsey had been in to see him last week after becoming concerned over whether he is in the new manager’s plans.
The Welshman was substituted against Manchester City and then dropped against Chelsea.
It casts doubt over whether Ramsey – who is in the final year of his current deal at Arsenal with no sign of a breakthrough in contract talks – has a future under the new boss.
Emery said: “I spoke with him last week. I said, ‘I want you focused only on training and only on the match, you show us the capacity to help the team’.
“The contract is another thing for his agent and the club. But we want and I need his focus only on training, only on the match and on his performance each day.
“My focus is on the match and I want the player to be focused only on today so that they give our fans quality and energy.
“They should focus only on showing our capacity to find the win.”
Arsenal have lost both league games under Emery and face West Ham today desperate to kick-start their season with a much-needed morale-boosting win. But ex Gunners favourite Alan Smith fears it will be a “long road back” for Emery to stop Arsenal from being a soft touch.
Smith, who has released an autobiography called Heads Up, said: “The first two games were always going to be difficult and there are things you’d hoped he would have eradicated in terms of tracking runners or dealing with long balls over the top. But I guess old habits die hard.
“The lack of accountability is what wound up a lot of us ex-players. If we didn’t follow orders then we wouldn’t play in the next game and that didn’t always happen under Arsene Wenger and that was always frustrating.
“He (Emery) is certainly a change, he’ll pick on merit rather than reputation and that’s good to see. But it’s a long road back, although the club has turned and is heading in a better direction.
“That’s almost the most you can hope for. I think success would be a top-four finish. That would be a fantastic achievement.”
The former England international added: “To claw that back won’t be easy but maybe more than league places and trophies, it’s more about being a more substantial team with more substance, a bit more steel and being a team which won’t roll over.
“When you go to Manchester City or United and you don’t see the sort of chaotic performance that we saw this time last year at Liverpool – it’s about changing that reputation back to one of Arsenal being tough to beat.”