Arsenal: Matteo Guendouzi has nothing to do with Aaron Ramsey… ideally

Arsenal brought in not one, but two new midfielders in the wake of Aaron Ramsey’s ongoing silence, but there’s no reason to connect the two yet.

When Lucas Torreira was more or less announced a week or so ago, I made it a point to say that he should, ideally, have nothing to with Aaron Ramsey’s prolonged stay with Arsenal. After all, they are two different types of midfielders and they both fit into the same formation.

That was the idea, actually. To complete the midfield and make Ramsey even more comfortable, which Torreira absolutely accomplished. Gaining Torreira did not inherently mean losing Ramsey.

Throw in Matteo Guendouzi, who has been signed and added to the first team, and you have to ask the same question – how does he affect Ramsey, if at all?

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Again the answer is, ideally, not at all. Without seeing how the rest of the summer plays out, it’s impossible to say for sure, but on the surface, the two don’t have to be related. Even in spite of the fact that Guendouzi has a similar swashbuckling style as Ramsey.

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But that doesn’t mean that one is replacing the other. And I find it easier to conclusively say that Guendouzi is not replacing Ramsey than Torreira, mainly just because of the end result. Ramsey and Guendouzi play a similar style, but one is far more readymade than the other.

Not just that, but despite all of the incomings, there doesn’t have to be a corresponding outgoing. Guendouzi fits into the six-midfielder model that I assume the Gunners are going for. They have three midfield positions (again, assumedly) and with how many competitions they will want to be serious contenders in, they are going to need six midfielders to fill the roles.

They currently have those six midfielders. More if you start going into the youth ranks, but we don’t have to delve into that now.

Maybe no one else was paralleling the Guendouzi arrival to anything related to anyone else in the team, but my mind inherently relates everything to Aaron Ramsey, so it helps me put my mind at ease to overstate how nothing necessarily has anything to do with Ramsey.

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We don’t know anything for sure until it’s official, but unless someone else can argue the counterpoint, which I haven’t seen yet, then I’m going to keep believing that Ramsey remains unchanged. He will stay and we will flourish.