Arsenal: Grading 11 potential Aaron Ramsey replacement

8. Emile Smith Rowe / Grade 4.5 / Price N/A

If there is one thing I love, it is internal solutions. I love believing that Reiss Nelson can be a solution to our winging problems. I love believing that Konstantinos Mavropanos and Krystian Bielik can help our defensive crisis. It’s a wonderful thing to think about and Unai Emery clearly has this as a priority for his Arsenal.

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But in this situation, it just doesn’t make sense to throw Emile Smith Rowe into the fire and say “get at it kid, let’s see what happens.”

For starters, let me say that Smith Rowe is the first guy on this list to have that attacking spark – that ability to make things happen in the attack. He was already scoring goals with the first team earlier in the year.

But he’s too young to be trusted with such a monumental task of replacing Aaron Ramsey. As a rotational option, I love him. And I mean a serious rotational option, where we do keep him in the mix, but losing Ramsey requires serious investment, and we don’t have anyone at the club capable of doing it.

That said, this may be a rare occasion where I wouldn’t be all that sour if Unai Emery decided to take a risk and stay at home with his solution, if solely because Smith Rowe is so incredibly exciting.

We are crossing the boundary into the players rated 5.0 and higher! Exciting! No. 7 is next.