Arsenal: Is This The End Of Aaron Ramsey?

Aaron Ramsey played a horrific 19 minutes before being subbed off with an injury. With Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain impressing, is this the end of his Arsenal career?

The second goal for Watford was the one that made Arsenal’s task significantly more difficult. After conceding in unfortunate circumstance after Younes Kaboul struck a deflected free kick past Petr Cech with the goalkeeper unable to reverse his momentum and leap to his left and save the shot, rescuing a win was difficult.

Once Troy Deeney had slotted home at the far post after Etienne Capoue’s run-and-shot effort, the mountain to climb grew an extra thousand metres. It was a terrible goal to concede, both in terms of the weak defending that was at fault for the goal but also for the state of the game as a whole.

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The goal started with a loose throw in from Gabriel Paulista which Aaron Ramsey, in a showing poor athleticism, was unable to control. Capoue collected the ball and drove forward, gliding past Shkodran Mustafi before seeing his shot smothered well by Cech. Deeney converted the rebound and suddenly 2-0 down with just 13 minutes played. The primary fault for the goal, though, must fall on the shoulders of Ramsey.

Failing to bring down the throw in was poor, although it was not the most accurate throw in from Paulista. But his major mistake was his attitude after he initially lost the ball. Rather than chase down Capoue, pressurising his first touch as he dribbled towards the Arsenal penalty area, Ramsey simply jogged back toward goal, showing little energy or effort in trying to prevent what resulted in being the winning goal.

After a torrid 19 minutes, Ramsey was subbed off with a calf strain and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain came on in his place. Despite not looking all that comfortable in the first half, in the second, Oxlade-Chamberlain was masterful in a deep-lying, playmaker role once again. He was far more agile than Ramsey, completed 88% of his passes and proceeded to engineer space in attacking areas for Alexis Sanchez and Theo Walcott with precise, forward-thinking passes.

Ramsey’s time on the sideline is not yet known. A calf strain usually leads to a period of a couple of weeks. Nonetheless, injuries aside, the Welshman does not deserve to start ahead of Chamberlain. The Ox was majestic against Southampton, impressed again on Tuesday and should start against Chelsea at the weekend.

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With Santi Cazorla still to return from injury, Mohamed Elneny and Granit Xhaka set to be welcomed back to the squad in the coming weeks, and now less than 18 months remaining on his current deal, could this be the end for Ramsey in North London? Arsene Wenger has some very big decisions to make.

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