Last season, many were critical of Aaron Ramsey. His positioning, his ability. Arsenal weren’t too hot as well. Arsene Wenger wasn’t getting applause for the work he was doing as manager. This season? Everything has been turned around, and the French manager is trying to take full credit for the Welshman’s turnaround.
Should he? In some way, sure. But it’s easy to forget that Wenger was the one who player Ramsey so often out of position. This year there hasn’t been one single place Ramsey has been stuck to, but it’s usually somewhere between the right side with a drift to the inside or in more retreated, central role, usually being the free man in the middle who ventures forward.
Wenger, always someone who loves to mask reality with a dose of his personal view on things, makes it seem like he’s the only one who believed in Ramsey after most of last season, and that everything good that’s happened to arguably his best player in this campaign, leading the Premier League by 4 points, scoring 11 goals in all competitions and forming a very successful partnership with Olivier Giroud, is thanks to the French manager.
Let’s not forget that one year ago people were saying to me, ‘it’s difficult to play him at the Emirates’. You could see there was an impatience with him at the Emirates. You always are, as a manager, in a period where you think: ‘Do I push him through and he can go more down, or do I give him a breather to regenerate, to get him a fresh start? That’s always difficult for us to assess because it is linked to their mental state. When their own confidence is down, of course they are in trouble. But he is a confident boy. You have to give him credit for that transformation because he could deal with that. He could come back, never give up, convince everybody that he has the needed quality.
Ramsey has always been the more talented of the Wlishere-Ramsey duo, but didn’t get the right support from his manager after the injury. Wilshere soon took center stage as the next big hope for the club, and Ramsey was pushed to the bench or to the wing, especially on the left, where he makes no impact at all. This season, Wenger smartened up, along with Ramsey himself who improved on almost every factor of his game. It still doesn’t mean the French manager deserves all the credit.