Arsenal: There’s no choice but to trust Aaron Ramsey

Arsenal will be bidding farewell to Aaron Ramsey in less than two months, but for now, all they can do is invest in him completely. There’s nothing else to be done.

Arsenal need to sort out a lot of things, but in the here and now, there just aren’t many options. We do have to remember, especially going into the first leg with Napoli, that we are a completely different team at home, and that whatever happened at Everton will likely not factor into another home match.

What happens at Watford is another story, but it’s Napoli first, and for Napoli, we have to get over some hard news – Granit Xhaka and Laurent Koscielny probably won’t be ready to play. This is according to Unai Emery, who called them both doubts.

So the big question is what we can do in their absence, and the big answer is one thing – trust Aaron Ramsey. Because right now, I don’t know what else we can do.

I don’t like the idea of trusting a guy who is going to be leaving in a few short weeks, but in the state that the club is currently in, no one is more central to the success of the club than a truly reliable midfielder. Of which we are currently lacking.

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Xhaka being a doubt is a major punch to the nads, because it was the one big thing missing against Everton – a presence in the midfield. Neither Matteo Guendouzi nor Mohamed Elneny were able to replicate any semblance of reliability and it fell to Ramsey to make an impact with a late arrival.

We can’t sit by and wait for that late arrival against Napoli and, by extension, against Watford. We can’t afford another Everton. One more Everton and you’re looking at an uphill climb to get to the Champions League when it was all in our control just a few days ago.

Who else are you going to trust? I’d never trust Mesut Ozil. Guendouzi is too young. Lucas Torreira is still learning. Elneny is Elneny. You trust Ramsey or you might as well start forfeiting the crucial battle of the midfield, which is the one battle we have consistently won all year.

I don’t like it, because it’s just another reminder how important Ramsey is to the club, but given how important he is to the club, there’s no way around letting him carry us across the finish line.