7 Reasons Aaron Ramsey's Injury Crippled Arsenal's Season

7. €œNo, Clive. He Was Looking To Score With That Shot.€

So. It turns out Aaron Ramsey, despite being a ripe 23 years of age, is actually a historian. Yep. He's clearly gone back over a century plus worth of history of professional football and come to the conclusion that scoring a goal is a good idea. He's developed a decent knack for it too. STATISTICS! BY GOD, IT'S TIME FOR SOME STATISTICS Y'ALL! Urgh, crunch those numbers... one more rep... €œthe goals went in 2-by-2 hurrah, hurrah€... Prior to his injury on Dec 26, Ramsey played in all but one of Arsenal's first 27 games of the season (all competitions). That's 26 games then, assuming my maths is correct. In those 26 games he did THIS: - Scored at least one goal in ten of those games (scoring a brace three times). - Scored the WINNING goal (or two!) in six of those ten matches. - Assisted a further 7 goals amidst his own strikes. - Had anywhere between 1 and 4 shots ON TARGET in SIXTEEN of those games. - Only three times did he fail to muster a shot at all, the three games prior to his injury (L. 0-2 vs Napoli, L. 3-6 vs Man City, D. 0-0 vs Chelsea). Despite missing essentially half of Arsenal's season, he is: - Arsenal's 2nd highest goalscorer, after Giroud, with 9 goals. - Arsenal's joint top assist provider with 8 assists (shared with –zil). When Ramsey is playing, Arsenal have averaged: - 13.7 shots per game and exactly 2 goals. Compared with: - 13.4 shots per game and exactly 1.5 goals, when he isn't. Essentially, Ramsey's presence alone on the football pitch has provided us with a goal every two games more on average than when he's been missing. Some of those goals might've meant nothing (a la 1-5, 0-6 vs Liverpool and Chelsea) but some might have won us games and crucial, crucial points. The numbers simply don't lie.