Arsenal: Don’t forget that Aaron Ramsey can replace Alexis Sanchez

Arsenal supporters don’t think that there are many players who can replace Alexis Sanchez, but one is right under their nose – Aaron Ramsey.

There is a notion I proposed not long ago that I don’t think is very popular, but I want to remind everyone of it. Arsenal may well end up struggling to appease supporters in their prescribed replacement, whoever they may be, but I do believe that there is a pre-made solution already at the club.

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And that pre-made solution is going to really upset supporters, because it is Aaron Ramsey. Which I’m sure has all kinds of groans. Because Ramsey isn’t going to cost anything and he has frustrated people in the past, in between the present day and the old Super Rambo.

I’ll repeat my original notion. There are only two players on this Arsenal team who can make things happen for themselves, without anyone else’s help. It’s Alexis Sanchez and Ramsey. Alexandre Lacazette may turn into one as well, but as of right now, there are only two.

The key thing to remember before you go scoffing and writing off this idea is that both will come with their accompany frustrations. That’s part of being a self-starter.

Take Swansea City for instance. The two were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Alexis was banging his head on a wall and Ramsey was skating through the Swansea defense. Well, not entirely, he had his frustrations too, but not compared to Alexis.

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That’s part of the deal. But these are the types of players that you have to have in the team for when the going gets tough. Because that’s when they get the chance to shine. They can kickstart the team, and we have seen both capable of it.

The only complication is that we would drop down to one guaranteed self-starter as opposed to two. Lacazette has that upside and Jack Wilshere does too and we do have some time to see if one or both can be one of those creative engines that Alexis would leave behind, but in the immediate future, Ramsey is a replacement for Alexis.

Even against Swansea, we saw them interchanging roles fairly fluidly and that’s what made me think of this concept again, that in the here and now, there’s nothing to worry about.

Plus, if you push Ramsey forward, you add the potential for a new deeper midfielders, someone who can augment the club like Ramsey did, if not better. Ramsey will still track back, but the liability of him getting forward would no longer be there.

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It may seem crazy, and I’m not trying to say it’s wrong to think that it sounds crazy. But I, for one, am overly confident in Ramsey’s ability to be our superstar again. We’ve solved the problem that we never thought we would in the past two years and he may be better now than he was back then, mostly because he’s got more talent around him. It’sokay to trust in him.