There was much talk about who Arsene Wenger would pick for Arsenal’s first League match against Liverpool, and most readers agreed that Aaron Ramsey would not be one of the starters after his elongated exertions at the Euro2016 tournament with Wales.
But of course Wenger picked the midfielder, and Ramsey of course went down with a hamstring injury and will miss the next month including Wales’ first World Cup Qualifiers. The Welsh manager Chris Coleman was left wondering why Ramsey was risked ahead of other players that were fitter and had been training longer.
Coleman told reporters.”It’s disappointing he’s got an injury. Could it have been prevented? Possibly, yes,”
“I think we all expected him to (miss the start of the season), so I don’t know what happened between and when he ended up on the pitch.
“I think, to a man, if you were looking at that (team sheet against Liverpool), it was a bit of a surprise he started.
“I think Aaron said himself (in France) that he wasn’t expecting to.”
Personally I think Coleman is right to criticize Wenger, as Ramsey himself expressed at the beginning of July: “I am back on 1 August, so I have a few weeks off but, obviously, it kicks off a couple of weeks afterwards,” he said. “A few years ago, Germany won the World Cup and the German players came in just a few days before the first game of the season, but they missed that. He [Wenger] does like to give players a little break and I’ll be getting the same treatment. I feel I need a few weeks off now.”
So what is the verdict? Did Wenger bring Ramsey back too early and risk injury for no reason?
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Cazorla played more preseason games than Ramsey. And this is in addition to Cazorla having a relatively easy Summer compared to Ramsey since he didn’t make the Euros. Most of us expected Cazorla to start. Cazorla expected Cazorla to start. Yet Ramsey started. Yes, Coleman is right to criticize Arsenal for Ramsey’s injury.
Cazorla has also spent the majority of last season on the sidelines, is a bit older, and nowhere near the athlete Ramsey is. There’s not only match-fitness but conditioning as well, which Cazorla is obviously short on. Wenger was always open in the fact that he didn’t think Cazorla would be fully ready come start of the season, and he definitely didn’t look anywhere near he’s usual sharpness against Leicester.
Almost laughable. Whether or not Wenger made a misjudgment is not the issue.
After all the times national teams have fielded unfit Arenal players or overused Arsenal players and sent them back to Wenger injured, how anyone has the balls to complain about this in reverse is laughable.
AW knew bringing Alexis/Ramshy/Ozil/Giroud early will affect their fitness over the course of this season, he gambled. One gamble flopped, others are in making. AW is not someone who rotates a lot, hence has a very bad injury record. Most times he tries to play his best XI and at the end, after January, when Arsenal flatters to lose top spot, he blames injuries for it. This is a pretty tried and tested template and still we fans fall for it
Because Ozil and Giroud have played so many minutes so far obviously….
Seriously… WTF are you talking about?
Whenever there’s a major tournament half the fanbase goes…
‘Oh this player played deep in the tournament but how come he’s playing already and our players aren’t?’
Then the other half goes…
‘Doesn’t he learn rushing players back causes injuries?’
Damned if he do, damned if he don’t….
If AW dont buy, they will play
Probably not. At the end of the day Arsenal pay his wages, and there have been many times players haven’t been available for Arsenal after international duties through injury or recuperation. Wenger doesn’t have to let Ramsey go at all, and irrespective of whether Wenger is doing the right thing or not, he is doing Coleman a favour, so Coleman should be grateful rather than criticise.
Who gives a darn what Coleman has to say? Wales do not pay Ramsey wage to whinge about anything. Ramsey is having a good time sorting out his hair during this break. I swear to anything, our bunch of British players are a a bunch of fairies. Just look at them. I bet you they even shave their chest and ballzes. And we ask them to actually make a decent tackle. I think we are the ones at fault here, they are what they are. We just expect too much from them. Gosh, I’d like to be a fly on the wall if Tony Adams should ever storm in the dressing room with these fairies.
Luckily.. We’ve looked to have signed two absolute bosses for our spine. Mustafi and Xhaka seem hard, aggressive players. The english core is going to have to work awful hard on getting into our first XI. I personally don’t give AF about how the players look. Ramsey, Ox and Wilshere could dye their hair pink and take 800 selfies a day pulling duckface if they get anywhere near the players they’re capable of becoming…
In hindsight, yes, obviously…. But we’re hardly short in his position which is the main thing I’m concerned with. If he’d have rushed Kos back and he’d picked up an injury I’d have been livid.
i don’t like this talk about should wenger have played an x player or a z player.At the end of the day Ramsey played he got injured and now we move on as we have plenty of midfield options.
This transfer window has been an epic failure, getting rejected by players left right and center. But this has made me 100 percent sure that Wenger has given up on the title already.He knows without a world class striker he won’t win the league and he will stick with his stubborn policy and would leave at the end of the season, so thats that….
Anyways it’s a good move on his part to not waste money on average players who would be hard to get rid off when he leaves he has already such players in the squad (Giroud, mertesacker,Walcott) so it’s good he is keeping those funds for the new manager who i hope is not as idealist as he is.He will get us top 4 with this squad like he always does.
I am looking forward to the next season already
Transfer window would be a failure even if we’d end up with Hummels, Griezmann, Pogba and Lewandowski and failed to clinch the title. So is a bit broader than you make it. Besides, don’t sweat about it. You will live longer. Is not like you can do anything about it, innit?
not a failure, at least we will see he tried.. doing same thing every season expecting to win the title that’s FAILURE
Not true. Everyone hails transfers done by everyone elses but Arsenal. We signed two players so far (I never counted Asano, that’s a very stupid signing). In the end, there will be only one team winning the EPL. So what does that means? Weren’t their summers a failure? An even bigger one ?
Ramsey got injured! How can we argue that the gamble of bringing him back soon after his return to training worked?
Had we beaten Liverpool and had Ramsey scored in the game or had he been key to us beating Liverpool some might have argued the gamble was worth it.
As it stands the gamble was not worth it IMO.
It seems to me Arsenal have still not gotten to the bottom of their injury problems. Last summer we hired a German who was supposed to fix this problem but to me it feels nothing has changed.
As long as we remain one of the teams with the most injuries, which I don’t think is bad luck, it will be hard to compete.