Ramsey could be next out in talent drain
Financial constraints mean midfielder may swell list of unfulfilled potential
If ever there was a period which told us that Arsene Wenger’s hands were being eased off the Arsenal tiller, it was the final 10 days of last January’s transfer window. A club who had once only offered one-year deals to players above the age of 30, and who only ever spent big on incoming talent that also had a sizeable sell-on potential, rolled the dice on three players who would be 32 by the time their deals expired.
Mesut Ozil, Pierre-emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan represented a gamble of rare extravagance and, for all the subsequent talk of Unai Emery needing years to erode Wenger’s influence, the truth is that this task is virtually already complete.
With recruitment chief Sven Mislintat, chief executive Ivan Gazidis and lawyer Huss Fahmy moving centre stage last January – and the squad further overhauled since – this Arsenal team feels far more about them than Wenger.
What happened in January is shaping other major decisions. In an ideal world, the money would be found to fund something close to the £200,000 a week that Aaron Ramsey could surely command elsewhere. The real world, however, is that those sort of wages can only be afforded at Arsenal for a select few. Emery cannot recruit many others on this sort of wage and so the rationale in keeping it for more urgent priorities – a top centre-back, a winger who could add pace or a more physical presence up front – is entirely understandable.
Encouraging performances so far this season by Matteo Guendouzi and Alex Iwobi have further weakened the case for a player in Ramsey whose best position remains unclear.
At his best, he is a wonderful, match-winning force. And yet is he a No10? As he was for 63 unconvincing minutes against Watford on Saturday. Or a more conventional central midfielder?
Ramsey has said that he wants to play in central midfield, but his positional discipline remains limited. He covers vast swathes of grass and can pop up anywhere, but there is little defensive certainty in front of the back four. Arsenal absorbed that in his best spell five years ago, when Mikel Arteta anchored the midfield.
Emery already appears to have less tolerance than Wenger for an unpredictable central midfielder and so has pushed Ramsey further forward into a position that then restricts Ozil.
Alternatively, he could play out on the right or, as with Wales at Euro 2016, as one of two attacking midfielders behind a central striker. There he was voted into the team of the tournament.
Signing Ramsey back in 2010 was Wenger’s last great coup over Sir Alex Ferguson. Both managers were determined to recruit this Cardiff City prodigy and, even allowing for two FA Cup-winning goals and his deserved status as one of Wenger’s best of recent years, he is poised to follow Alex Oxlade-chamberlain, Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere in departing Arsenal with a definite sense that his talents were never quite fulfilled. Harry Maguire again showed his worth at either end of the pitch as Leicester City moved up into the top eight of the Premier League with their win over Newcastle United. He was commanding defensively and scored his second goal of the season to put the game beyond Newcastle. Ed Woodward. Natural to point fingers at Jose Mourinho, who has admittedly seemed to learn nothing from his final months at Real Madrid and Chelsea, but United’s biggest mistakes have still been made in the boardroom. Both transfer policy and selection of managers have been woeful.