Arsenal: Aaron Ramsey a legend… ish

Aaron Ramsey has officially signed a four-year deal with Juventus and will leave Arsenal at the end of the year. The midfielder is a club legend… ish.

The highest scoring central midfielder in the history of the club. Scoring two FA Cup final-winning goals. Recovering from one of the biggest leg breaks in the sport to be a fixture in the team. Rejecting Manchester United upon signing. These are the kind of statistics and achievements of a club legend.

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Aaron Ramsey will leave Arsenal at the end of the season. As confirmed on Monday, the Welshman will sign a four-year contract with Juventus reportedly worth £400,000-a-week pre-tax. It is a shame to see him leave for obvious reasons. And his exit has the Arsenal fan base all debating the same question. Is he a legend of the club?

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It isn’t really a question you can answer. There is not a hard-and-fast definition of what a ‘legend’. There are no concrete statistics that one must meet; it is not as simple achieving certain goals and being thrust into the legends class. Everyone will have their own expectations of what a legend should be, and everyone will therefore have different ideas on whether Ramsey is indeed a legend or not.

In the end, the debate does not really matter. It has little to no bearing on actual football. It is just an interesting topic of conversation. But it does provide a nice shaping of the career that Ramsey has enjoyed since he signed as a fresh-faced, fresher-legged 18-year-old 11 years ago. He may not have reached the heights hoped of him, but he wasn’t far off.

The 2013/14 season in which he scored and assisted 18 Premier League goals in just 1764 minutes and Alan Hansen compared him with Cristiano Ronaldo was the pinnacle of his play. It would end in an FA Cup victory, in which he poked home the extra-time winner to cease a near-decade trophy drought.

But for all of his potential, his longevity and the inspiring peaks and recoveries of his Arsenal testimony, simply listing the names of other ‘club legends’ perhaps sheds some light on the somewhat limited achievements of the marauding Welshman. Liam Brady, Thierry Henry, Ian Wright, Ted Drake, Cliff Baston, David O’Leary, Dennis Bergkamp, Tony Adams. And there are plenty more that I could have named.

Some of these players are the best players to ever play their position. They were some of the very best in the world throughout their careers. They made hundreds of appearances and won relentlessly. Ramsey, sadly, does not stand up to them favourably. That, of course, does not mean that he is not a legend, whatever that they mean. It simply casts a scrutinising light on his 11-year tenure.

Nevertheless, Ramsey is a player that should be celebrated, revered, praised, thanked, even glorified, at least to some extent. Whether he is a legend or not, does not really matter. He was a terrific player and I will miss him dearly.