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Arsenal: Wenger Must Stay The Course With Aaron Ramsey
By Josh Sippie
Arsenal has at long last deployed Aaron Ramsey in a central role and while it took awhile, it’s starting to click. Now they just have to stay the course.
Arsenal has not had an easy go of it with their strewn together midfield. They were so depleted that the holding two positions only had one option – Granit Xhaka and Aaron Ramsey. It was the partnership I longed for and it was finally given its chance to shine.
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Only it didn’t. It took awhile. And in the process, even more Gooner’s swore off Aaron Ramsey and would have sold him for a stick of bubblegum.
Ramsey has become the most polarizing player on the Arsenal squad and that’s a shame. There was a time where he was the heartbeat of the team. Now he is a peripheral presence, detested by most.
In the most recent outing against Swansea, it looked to be more of the same. Even in his central role, Ramsey was still struggling to really get going. You could see the cogs turning in his mind, but nothing was coming off.
And then it started happening. Around the hour mark, Ramsey started looking more useful and less feeble and helpless. He was stringing together play, sending in some threatening balls and challenging the opposing defense.
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The problem was that it was only a twenty or thirty minute thing.
Which brings me to the point. If there is a chance that Ramsey is starting to click, and it looks very likely given his late “coming-to” against the Swans, then it is crucial that Wenger stays the course and keeps the faith in the Welshman. Ramsey has always struggled getting his feet underneath him after returning from a long layoff. This is nothing new. But in the end, he always comes back into form and the Gunners reap the benefits.
Burnley should not be the fiercest of oppositions. Francis Coquelin is back in training and the temptation is probably to get Xhakalin (did we agree on that name?) back out on the pitch. But for the sake of a second chance, let Ramsey have this opportunity to prove that he has turned the corner.
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He may be frustrating at times, but surely he has earned that much at the club. It feels like only yesterday he was propelling the Welsh to the most improbable Euro run next to Iceland. Harnessing that ability should be so much more than a side story.