Arsenal: Unai Emery’s Aaron Ramsey plan contingent on two factors

Unai Emery has stated that he wants Aaron Ramsey to stay and be a key part of the Arsenal team. His plan is contingent on two factors: fitness and a new contract.

Unai Emery is now two weeks into his first preseason as Arsenal manager. While he has been in the role since late May, it is only from the turn of July that he has been able to get to real grips with the state of this squad, the talent, or lack thereof, that he has at his disposal, and the shape and the structure that he wants to implement to best utilise that talent. And it seems as though he is beginning to formulate his ideas with a little more detail and clarity.

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It had been rumoured since his arrival almost two months ago that Emery saw Aaron Ramsey as a key component of the team, believing that he would be a crucial player around which the team should be built. He has now heavily hinted at such.

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Speaking at one of the recent preseason training sessions, Emery, when asked about the Welshman, who was named Arsenal’s Player of the Season last year, stated that he is an important part of his plans and that he wants to work with him in the future, heavily implying the figurehead role that he could be set to star in:

"“I am very happy with him. Every training is with the ambition I want, working with quality and the competitive spirit I want. I want to work with him. His future is a question for the player and club. I said to Ivan, Raul and Sven [Gazidis, Sanllehi and Mislintat, the collective dealing with contracts and transfers] he’s an important player for me.”"

Although he may not confirm it explicitly, it is fairly reasonable to deduce that Ramsey is set to be a crucial part of the Emery era. There are just two factors which his apparent plan is contingent on: finance and fitness.

The first is obvious. Ramsey has just one year remaining on his current contract. If he is to be sold for any semblance of his true value, it must be this summer; if he is refusing to sign a new deal, one that has reportedly been offered to him, then Arsenal could be forced to sell, whether they want to or not. Either way, there is no guarantee that Ramsey will be in north London beyond August 9th.

But even if he does stay and does extend his contract to beyond the current 2019 expiration, there is still another issue that must be satisfied for him to justify Emery’s faith.

Ramsey’s availability is problematic, for a player of his importance, significance and value. In the last five years, he has played over 2000 league minutes just twice, and one of those years, 2014/15, he played only 2010 minutes. Across those four seasons, he has averaged 1928 minutes per season. That would put him as the tenth-most used player this past season, under 100 minutes more than Alex Iwobi and only 300 minutes more than Alexis Sanchez who sulked for half of the year and was in Manchester for the other half.

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I am a believer in the Ramsey plan. He is a very good player who can be built around and on. But it is not an infallible ploy. There are problems, and these are two of them, two that must be satisfied, even if they are beyond his control, for Emery’s ideas to be deemed successful.